Letters [March 2003]

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Lion-tamers vs. dull accountants

Thank you for sending me your fascinating publication. I
have just returned from meetings in Kenya and a visit to Mount Elgon
National Park to find your December 2002 edition in my pile of post.
I enjoyed your editorial on “Lion-tamers vs. dull
accountants.” Having watched a number of organizations evolve from
“founder’s passion” into “professional institution,” I am very
familiar with that difficult process. Difficult, but necessary, I
would say, because unless the “founder’s passion” is enough to solve
the problem, the organization must outlive the founder to continue
the work. Finding the balance is the challenge, and I agree with
your conclusion, though I fear your plea will fall on deaf ears in
the case of those receiving salaries in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars.

Letters

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.

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.

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.

Editorial: Conferences build movements

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Education, persuasion, fundraising,
and political organization all begin with getting
to know somebody.
Futurists have predicted since the
invention of book-printing that this ancient
truism would soon be amended by the advent of
mass media, which permit ever more rapid and
far-reaching distribution of ideas. Yet this has
not happened any more than the evolution of
advanced noses enabled dogs to give up their
eyesight. The actual major effect of each new
development in communication is simply to extend
human sensory input capabilities, and the most
frequent use of our extended input is always to
facilitate more human-to-human contact.
Thus book-printing stimulated the growth
of universities. Radio and television stimulated
travel. Use of the Internet exploded when
people discovered that it eases and expedites
meeting others with common interests. The
single most frequent specific use of e-mail is in
finding conjugal partners. Finding or placing
companion animals also ranks among the top dozen
uses, according to Internet researchers, some
of whom estimate that from a third to half of all
pet adoptions are now Internet-assisted.

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.

Earth Island again tries to save dolphins

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

SAN FRANCISCO–Earth Island Institute and six other
environmental and animal protection groups on February 12 applied for
a federal injunction against a December 31 rule change by the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration which would allow U.S.
firms to market tuna netted “on dolphin” as “dolphin-safe,” if no
dolphins are known to have been killed during the netting.
The injunction application takes the “dolphin-safe” issue
back into the same court where chief judge Thelton Henderson in May
1990 banned imports of yellowfin tuna from Mexico, Venezuela, and
Vanuatu, under a set of 1988 amendments to the 1972 Marine Mammal
Protection Act, and in January 1992 invoked the same law to ban $266
million worth of tuna imports from 30 nations.
Introduced by Congress in 1990, in reinforcement of the first
Henderson verdict, the “dolphin-safe” label has until now denoted
tuna caught by methods other than netting “on dolphin,” the method
preferred by Latin American tuna fishers. The Latin American tuna
industry has contended since 1990 that discriminating against imports
of tuna netted “on dolphin” amounts to trade protectionism on behalf
of the U.S. fleet.

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