LETTERS
ELEPHANTS
Recently the Supreme Court of India asked the Assam forest authorities to evict encroachers from our national parks, sanctuaries, and forest reserves. Many have built homes of cement slabs with corrugated sheet metal roofs. The forest authorities started an eviction drive, which has been welcomed by most of the people and nonprofit organizations in the community. But to our surprise they have engaged elephants to demolish the illegal construction.
The elephants have difficulty bringing down concrete structures, and have been injuring themselves in the effort. The use of elephants for the demolition has been condemned by the Wildlife Protect-ion Society of India, whose executive director, Belinda Wright, called the use of elephants "outrageous." Mrs Maneka Gandhi, India`s most renowned animal rights activist, was shocked to hear of their use, and has appealed to the authorities to stop the use of the elephants immediately.
I seek the help and expertise of organisations worldwide to help in this campaign, as the authorities have still not stopped using the elephants. We are planning to take the matter to the court.
The work is continuing daily. When the elephants balk, they are given homebrewed liquor so that they will continue.
Azam Siddiqui, Master Trainer
Animal Welfare Board of India
107/C, Railway Colony, New Guwahati 781021
Assam, India // Phone: 91-361-558702
This, including giving the elephants beer, is a case of good intentions gone badly awry. A common problem in India, Thailand, and other places where tractors are rapidly displacing elephants from logging work is that the elephants and their mahouts are either reduced to begging on city streets, a dangerous plight for all concerned, or are released with little or no experience of how to survive as wild animals. Fully habituated to humans, they often destroy crops and homes, and kill people.
In most nations, elephants who run amok are shot. In India, they typically spend the rest of their lives in state-run sanctuaries, which are elephant prisons in effect, even when they offer the best of care.
The Assamese officials hoped to keep elephants and mahouts usefully busy, but the task assigned was apparently unsuitable.
Rewarding working elephants with beer is an old practice of circus trainers as well as logging mahouts. As with humans, small quantities can have a sedative effect. But also as with humans, elephants can become alcoholic, and many of the deadliest elephant rampages occur when addicted but abandoned ex-working elephants raid village breweries and moonshine stills.
Building a safety net for pets
"How do we get the word out that pet ownership is a commitment for the entire life of the animal? How do we educate people to not give up or dump their animals?" We at Maricopa County Animal Care & Control were asking ourselves these questions just over a year ago, but chose not to find fault with the people we encounter and instead find ways to help these people and their animals.
We began by reducing the days in which we would accept owner relinquishments to Tuesday through Friday. We are inundated with lost pets over the weekend and typically had to euthanize owner-relinquished animals to make room for the lost pets picked up by animal control or found by the public, whom we are required to hold.
Limiting acceptance of owner-surrendered pets to Tuesday through Friday helps owners to understand that their animals have a better chance of being rehomed if brought in when we are better able to keep them, and gives the owners time to rethink their decision.
At the time of relinquishment we ask owners why their animals are coming to us. Our service theme is to "create happiness by bringing pets and people together." Ancillary to that is creating happiness by helping pets and people to stay together.
We partner with the Ari-zona Animal Welfare League to provide behavioral counseling, understanding that most issues can be resolved short of relinquishment.
We partner with a local behaviorist and several agility clubs to provide dog obedience and agility training, feeling that anything we can do to enhance the human/animal bond will minimize the likelihood of the animal ever being relinquished.
We partner with PETCO and the West Phoenix Food Bank to provide poor families with pet food to help them through difficult times.
We offer free or low cost spay/neuter and vaccination to the pets of people on public assistance.
We encourage owners to keep sucklings until they are weaned, when we can guarantee the offspring will be adopted after being neutered, and we spay the mother at no cost. We also provide food and medicine to help with this process.
On occasion we have even fostered an animal for a family moving across the country, and have then shipped the animal, once the family was situated.
These are just a few of the tactics that shelters can implement to garner and build community support, one person or family at a time.
Ed Boks, Director
Maricopa County, Animal Care & Control
2323 S. 35th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009
Phone: 602-506-8515
Lab Vervets
I received the June edition and couldn't help but notice a comment attributed to me about Marc Hauser's vervet colony. I have no record of having ever talked to you about this issue at all. You never asked me for a comment in the first place, but attributed a comment to me that I never made to you.
Alan Berger
Executive Director
Animal Protection Institute
P.O. Box 22505 | Sacramento, CA 95822
Phone: 916-731-5521 | Fax: 916-731-4467
The Editor responds:
In fact it was Marc Hauser who e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on May 13, "I just got the final word from Alan Berger and they [the Animal Protection Institute, sponsor of the Texas Snow Monkey Sanct-uary] are rejecting the vervets. The board claims that there is no room for them, and that the proposal never went through the proper channels. He said that my agreement with [then-Texas Snow Monkey Sanct-uary director] Lou Griffin did not consitute 'the proper channels,' and that a formal proposal would have been needed, to be reviewed and discussed by the board."
After obtaining similar accounts from other sources, we asked Alan Berger by e-mail on May 23, "Is this all true? If not, what is not?" Berger did not answer the question, though he replied to the e-mail, and also did not answer when asked again on June 17 and June 18.
The vervet colony now resides at Wild Animal Orphanage.