Niger activists oppose Arab hunting

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

NIAMEY, Niger–“Animal rights campaigners in Niger are
protesting against the Niger government’s decision to allow visitors
from the Persian Gulf to hunt protected animals and birds,” Idy
Baroau of BBC reported on January 9. Barou said the activists, led
by environmentalist politician Ibrahim Sani, had filed a formal
complaint against the issuance of permits to kill gazelles and
capture birds of prey.
“The Gulf princes have been using big-caliber guns and cargo
planes to carry their booty,” Baroau added. “In response to the
criticism, Abdou Mamane, a spokesman for the Ministry of Animal
Resources and the Environment, said that the Arab guests had paid
$300,000 to get carte blanche to hunt in Niger.”

Rocky Mountains “Witch hunts & wildlife” panic is resolved

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

SALT LAKE CITY, DENVER– A 13-month two-state panic over
alleged cat mutilations by purported sadists officially ended on
August 1, 2003, when police chief Ricky Bennett of Aurora,
Colorado, told news media that, “There are definite signs and
markings that all were caused by predators.”
Twenty-nine of the 46 cats who were supposedly mutilated in
Colorado were found in Aurora, but the panic actually began after
the remains of a dozen cats with similar injuries were found in the
same Salt Lake City neighborhood from which Elizabeth Smart, 14,
was kidnapped on June 5, 2002.
Smart was recovered alive on March 12, 2003. David Brian
Mitchell, 49, and his wife, Wanda E. Barzee, 57, are charged
with kidnapping Smart from her Salt Lake City bedroom, raping her,
holding her prisoner until their capture, and attempting to kidnap
Smart’s 18-year-old cousin.
Mitchell’s stepson Mark Thompson, who helped bring Mitchell
to justice, told Newsweek that Mitchell had a history of cruelty to
animals “He shot our dog in front of us. He killed our bunny and
made us eat it,” Mitchell recalled.

Wolves, seals, kangaroos, & other scapegoats for economic failure

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ANCHORAGE, ST. JOHN’S, LIMA,
SYDNEY–Political strategy in response to
economic stress in Third World dictatorships
often includes declaring a rabies crisis and
putting troops on the streets to intimidate the
public by shooting dogs.
In the underdeveloped democratic nations
the strategy varies. Instead of sending out
soldiers, armed citizens are authorized to vent
their frustration by shooting whatever animals
are most easily blamed.
In Atlantic Canada this spring the
“scapegoats” are seals, accused of keeping cod
stocks low, though there is little serious
scientific doubt that overfishing during the
1980s caused the cod population to crash.
In Australia, kangaroos are the
“scapegoats.” They even thrive like goats amid
dry conditions that kill sheep.
In Alaska, both troops and armed citizens are sent out to kill wolves.
The wolves, as political cartoons indicate,
are surrogates for environmentalists.

BOOKS: Tigers and Tigerwallahs

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Tigers and Tigerwallahs
Including
Tiger-Wallahs: Saving the Greatest of the Great Cats
by Geoffrey C. Ward with Diane Raines Ward

Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett

The Secret Life of Tigers by Valmik Thapar,

and Tiger Haven by Billy Arjan Singh

Oxford University Press (YMCA Library Bldg., Jai Singh Rd., New Delhi
110 001, India), 2002. Circa 750 pages, hardcover. No U.S. price listed.

Relatively few people in India will ever see Tigers and
Tigerwallahs, a manificent four-volumes-in-one collection of tiger
conservation classics–but many might avidly absorb it if they could
afford it.
Tigers and Tigerwallahs is available in other nations only by
special order.
People who care profoundly what becomes of tigers must go to
that trouble, because as grim as some of the accounts in Tigers and
Tigerwallahs are, and as bleak the prophecies, the experiences of
the authors over the past 100 years amount to a comprehensive manual
of what to do and not do in trying to save large, charismatic
megafauna of almost any kind.

More talk than tiger-saving in India, with poaching on the rise

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

NEW DELHI–Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his
daughter Chelsea in March 2000 viewed a tiger named Bhambu Ram in
Ranthambore National Park.
This for a time made Bhambu Ram the poster-cat for Indian
tiger conservation–but he is now believed to be a posthumous
poster-cat.
Months after rumors reached mass media that Bhambu Ram had
disappeared, police supposedly seized his pelt in Delhi.
Months after that, Indian minister for the environment and
animals T.R. Baalu in February 2003 proposed a meeting among
government officials and conservation groups to discuss what to do
about escalating tiger poaching.
Tigers, elephants, leopards, and smaller species are all
under increased poaching stress lately. This is partly because India
is among the last nations where significant populations of animals
valued in traditional Asian medicine still can be found. Poaching
persists because of corrupt and inefficient links in wildlife habitat
management and law enforcement, and because the political priorities
of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Dal party do not favor animals.

China wants Olympic tourists to come for tigers too

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

BEIJING–A camera trap set up by staff of the Hunchan Nature
Reserve in early February captured the first known photo of a wild
Amur tiger in northeastern China.
Members of the nature reserve staff positioned the camera
after hearing from a local farmer that an unknown large predator had
killed a mule that morning. The tiger tripped the electric eye that
operates the camera upon returning to the carcass late at night.
The photo provides “strong evidence that tigers are crossing
from the Russian Far East to repopulate previous tiger strongholds,”
said the Wildlife Conservation Society, whose equipment the Hunchan
team used.
Best known for operating the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium,
Central Park Zoo, and Prospect Park Zoo, all in New York City, the
Wildlife Conservation Society applies the profits to funding
overseas field research.
If Amur tigers are finding suitable habitat in China, with
adequate wild prey and safety from poaching, the species may yet
survive a population crash in Siberia that has cut their numbers from
an estimated 400 in 1997 to just 190 at the end of 2002.

Is Malaysia big and wild enough to keep wild tigers?

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

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.

India loves leopards (with some reservations)

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

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.

United Arab Emirates try to save the Arabian leopard

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

SHARJAH, UAE–Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Quasimi of
Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in mid-February 2003 hosted an
international conference on saving the Arabian leopard, which was
considered extinct until a goatherd shot one in 1992. Experts now
think 150 to 250 Arabian leopards persist in the UAE, Yemen,
Oman, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
About three times larger than a domestic housecat, the
Arabian leopard normally hunts Nubian ibex, the Arabian gazelle,
and wild or feral goats. The Animal Management Consultancy, funded
by Al Quasimi, has a wild population of 10 Arabian leopards, has
bred eight in captivity, and in January purchased a wild-caught
leopard named Al Wadei from a roadside zoo in Yemen, where according
to Severin Carrell of the London Independent he was kept in
“appalling” conditions.
The Sharjah leopard conference was convened two weeks after
reporter Nasouh Nazzal of Ras Al Khaimah disclosed that one Abdullah
Khamis Rashid Al Habsi, 65, recently stoned to death a “lynx” that
he claimed was about to attack him, and that Al Habsi admitted to
shooting one two years earlier, also in purported self-defense.

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