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Rev. 3.26.03 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2003

ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

OCTOBER 2003

EDITORIAL

Seeing what is wonderful through darkness

This edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE is three weeks late because we have just spent 26 out of 40 days on the road in China and South Africa, gathering so much information that fully reporting our findings will take months.

We flew first to Beijing, where we explored the increasingly positive attitudes toward animals in the national capital of the world's most populous nation.

We obtained perspectives on wildlife and natural habitat by visiting the Beijing Raptor Rescue Center, the Natural History Museum, the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park (which is among the major Beijing urban green spaces), and the Great Wall, surrounded since ancient times by a semi-protected national forest.

Background about dog and cat issues came from visiting the intensely motivated Animal Rescue Branch of the Environmental Protection Association, the offices and shelter of the enterprising Association of Small Animal Protection (with whom we collaborated to rehome a kitten), and the Beijing Man & Animal Environmental Education Centre, whose shelter in the former officers' quarters of a decommissioned air force base is among the best-managed and most attractive we have ever seen.

Alerted by colleagues within the official Chinese news media, introduced to us by ARB founder Wu Tianyu, we sat up late one night working the Internet to relay information about a dog massacre that was understood to be impending in Henan province, as result of a rabies outbreak, and to share expertise about stopping rabies through vaccination. We pointed out the absurdity of an exemption reportedly given to dog meat farmers, and the possibility that the massacre was really meant to suppress petkeeping, lest growing sympathy for dogs tends to undercut the dog meat trade.

No one seemed to favor the killing in lieu of vaccination, when questioned. Eventually the Henan authorities denied that a dog massacre had actually been planned.

We also visited the Beijing Agricultural University veterinary school; Lu Di, the founder of the China Small Animal Protection Association; and Gongdelin, a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that is globally noted for such offerings as "Roasted Vegetarian Hedgehog."

From Beijing we flew to Chengdu to catch up on progress at the China Bear Rescue Center, operated by the Animals Asia Foundation. The Chengdu facility houses more than 10 times as many bears as the prototype we visited at Panyu in late 2000, and is eventually to hold five times more bears than now.

The prototype, built by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, has since been returned to IFAW.

Meeting us at the Chengdu airport and sharing a ride out to the China Bear Rescue Center were Geeta Seshamani and Kartick Satyanarayan, cofounders of the Wildlife SOS bear sanctuary in India. That project was still just a dream when we previously met them, in 1997. Today it is among the best-regarded bear sanctuaries in the world.

Seshamani and Satyanarayan also joined us in a side trip to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Designed with technical advice from the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, it exhibits only giant pandas, red pandas, rare native birds, and waterfowl. A stocked fishing pond was the only reminder that Chinese zoos often fall short of U.S. standards--and fishing ponds were common at U.S. zoos too just a generation ago.

Like ANIMAL PEOPLE, Seshamani and Satyanarayan took the opportunity to do relevant research on their way to the Asia for Animals conference in Hong Kong.

Postponed from May due to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome panic that briefly closed even the notorious live wildlife markets of Guangdong province, the Asia for Animals conference was cohosted by the Animals Asia Foundation and the Hong Kong SPCA.

ANIMAL PEOPLE, the Best Friends Animal Society, and the International Division of the North Shore Animal League America were among the cosponsors.

Animals Asia Foundation founder Jill Robinson delivered her usual rousing speeches. ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett moderated an intensive panel on zoonotic disease prevention. McKee Project veterinarian Gerardo Vicente, of Costa Rica, sponsored by ANIMAL PEOPLE on a speaking tour of Hong Kong and India, explained the "No-kill, no shelters" approach to animal control.

The real stars, however, were Asians helping Asians to recognize and put to work their own insights and expertise. Blue Cross of India founder Chinny Krishna detailed the success of the Animal Birth Control programs in many Indian cities, nearly 40 years after he first proposed them. Hong Kong SPCA president Lisa Tsui explained that vegetarianism is imperative for animal advocates because moral authority comes from visibly living one's convictions. Sunan Kum of South Korea and Nina Hontiveros Lichauco of the Philippines described their long struggles to educate their nations away from eating dogs and cats.

Horror stories were told, and were at times gruesomely illustrated with slides of rabies victims taken by Hong Kong SPCA chief surgeon Hugh Stanley, dog butchery in China photographed by Asian Animal Protection Network founder John Wedderburn, M.D., and factory farming, presented by Compassion In World Farming director Joyce D'Silva.

Yet attitudes of hope and empowerment prevailed. Planned Pethood Plus founder Jeff Young, a veteran of U.S. and European conferences, contrasted the "griping and complaining we always hear from rescuers and shelter people about how we don't have this, we don't have that, and nobody cares, with this guy who spoke this morning," who was Compassionate Crusaders Trust founder Debasis Chakrabarti. "He comes from Calcutta, one of the poorest cities in the world," Young continued, "but he never stops smiling. I look at him, and what he's doing with his people, and can't help but feel inspired. We came to teach you," Young said, "but what I'm finding out is, we have a lot more to learn from you."

Humane education

We were barely home before it was time to leave again to attend the All-Africa Humane Education Summit in Cape Town, prefaced by a brief visit to the Helderberg Nature Reserve on the city outskirts; three days at the Kalahari Raptor Center, far to the north; and a two-day drive with KRC cofounder Chris Mercer back to Cape Town through the Kalahari and Karoo deserts. Just south of Springbok we rescued a tortoise whose lower carapace had been cracked by a car. The tortoise is now recovering with Stephanie Woolf at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Somerset West.

The WRC facilities are still under construction on land donated by Pat O'Neill, who has gradually transformed the renowned Broadlands equine stud farm next door into a wildlife rescue center recently incorporated as the Kalu Animal Trust.

O'Neill invited us to lunch. In her twenties, she recalled, she lived in Kenya, near Joy Adamson. About two years before Adamson rehabilitated and released the lionness Elsa, about whom she authored Born Free, O'Neill successfully released a lionness named Tana.

Nearly 70 animal advocates from 19 African nations met in Cape Town, most of them previously unacquainted and many attending their first-ever conference.

Humane Education Trust founder and Compassion In World Farming regional representative Louise van der Merwe exhausted all funds available to her in order to pay for the air fare, meals, and lodging of participants from economically disadvantaged nations.

Beyond facilitating introductions, the All-Africa Humane Education Summit was held to introduce the new South African national humane education curriculum, to be taught in all South African schools beginning in 2004, with the dual aim of improving animal welfare and reducing domestic violence. Recognition of the need for humane education fulfills one of van der Merwe's most cherished ambitions, and is a first in Africa, if not the world.

The summit was also meant to share the curriculum concept (the materials are still in development) with the rest of Africa.

Declared UNESCO Project Officer Ben Boys in an opening day address, "I believe that global sustainable development cannot be achieved without justice and peaceful co-operation...Humane education encourages compassion and respect for people, animals, and the environment...Thus, it is the basis for respect and understanding for other human beings and all life. Cruelty to animals is definitely not part of sustainable development."

Boys did not just speak and leave. Carefully listening much more than talking, Boys participated in every possible workshop during the next two days.

M.H. Nthaga, of the Botswana ministry of economic and industrial development, considered attending the conference such an urgent priority that when his superiors refused to send him, he took vacation time and attended anyway.

Sorghum farmer Mustafa Bakrawi of Sudan managed to attend even though Sudan has no diplomatic relations with South Africa. Obtaining a visa through the assistance of the Homeless Animal Protection Society of Ethiopia, whose three cofounders all attended, Bakrawi arrived with a mandate from the Sudan government to introduce himself to as many South African officials as possible, toward helping to facilitate diplomatic recognition.

Youth for Conservation founder Josphat Ngonyo, of Kenya, rose from the floor at the first question period to distinguish between animal exploitation and authentic sustainable development. He drew some of the strongest applause of the day.

Later Ngonyo, Mercer, and others organized an informal Pan-African network to respond to animal exploitation in the name of development. Bakrawi and Vegetarian Society of Uganda cofounder Dr. Wabbi Leonard joined ANIMAL PEOPLE in expressing their views about trophy hunting as the new colonialism to the Gulf News, the leading English newspaper serving the United Arab Emirates--a major source of hunters who visit Africa.

Unfortunately, as Bakrawi and Leonard borrowed the ANIMAL PEOPLE laptop at the guest house where we all stayed, Zimbabwean activist Bigboy Musemwa, 28, reportedly became intoxicated at another of the three guest houses that hosted conference delegates. Annoyed that other participants did not share his enthusiasm for Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, whose supporters have caused enormous animal suffering while seizing farms and wildlife parks for land redistribution, Musemwa apparently shouted praise of Mugabe until he was asked to leave the guest house bar. He fell and broke his jaw after he was escorted out; wandered across the street in search of the delegates he had been arguing with; and when not admitted to their rooms, smashed numerous windows with an iron table.

Louise van de Merwe is likely to be held financially responsible for the damage. The episode, at a glance, could scarcely be a worse advertisement for humane education. Yet it demonstrated the need for humane education to counter the violent role models provided by the Zimbabwean "war veterans," most of whom are too young to have actually fought in the 1965-1987 insurgency that toppled the apartheid regime of the former Rhodesia. None of the other delegates in any manner broke decorum.

"To compare Africa's problems to Asia's, very superficially," concluded Kim in a note to political scientist Peter Li, an Asia for Animals keynote speaker, "there is a similarity in the Congo region to south China, in that they eat every kind of wild animal, and wildlife is disappearing fast. Animal agriculture is industrialized in the wealthy countries. Dogs are eaten in isolated regions, and are killed in the rituals of voodoo and similar religions in the former slave-trading nations of western Africa. These rituals go uncriticized by the politically correct because they are 'culture,' even though their whole purpose is to do evil to others or to gain power over them. Dogs are beloved among many tribal

Africans, however," as the traditional first defense of herders and villagers against lions, leopards, hyenas, and many of the other hazards of life on the veldt.

For ANIMAL PEOPLE artist Wolf Clifton, who celebrated his 13th birthday at Asia for Animals, the highlight of the South Africa trip was the opportunity to befriend two orphaned jackal puppies, Bonnie the bat-eared fox, and a fearless troupe of meerkats at KRC.

Merritt learned that though abandoned dens of aardvarks are easily found, aardvarks themselves are so extremely nocturnal and change dens so often that even many locals have never seen one. Intensively studying former dens and tracks for two days, he identified several places where active dens might be, hidden under brush, and rose at 2:30 one morning to seek an aardvark in earnest. An hour later he came upon an aardvark at the second of the sites.

"He was making so much noise as he snuffled up truffles that I was able to stalk within 20 feet of him," Merritt e-mailed to friends. "There I stopped, as he turned toward me, and held completely still. He snuffled to within touching distance before he sniffed my sneakers, gave a squeal-grunt, and ran away.

He looked like a longnosed, long-eared pig from in front, but more like a bear from behind. I could easily see why the locals call them 'antbears.'

"Before leaving, I bent down and marked my exact location in the dirt, and wrote 'Ant Bear.' Then I verified the sighting from the tracks the following day.

"Sometimes it takes some effort to see what's wonderful through the darkness, but it was definitely worth it."