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“Punjab
[Pakistan] authorities have stopped an illegal bear baiting event from
going ahead for the first time in twenty years,” World Society for
the Protection of Animals publicist Jonathan Owen announced on April 8,
2005. “The event, to have climaxed a week-long fair at Pir Mehal
in March, famed for bear baiting, was disbanded after WSPA representatives
warned police and wildlife officials. Mehmood Ahmed, Secretary of Forests
& Wildlife in Sindh state, Pakistan, on March 7 announced at a ceremony
in Hyderabad honoring staff for successful actions against bear baiting
with dogs that his department is seeking amendments to the Sindh Wildlife
Ordinance that will ban bear baiting entirely. Mehmood Ahmed thanked WSPA
for “controlling bear baiting up to 80%,” the Pakistan Times
reported. Representing WSPA, Animals’ Rights in Islam author Fakhr-I-Abbas
told the gathering that while the wild bear population of Pakistan is
in jeopardy, exhibitors of dancing bears and promoters of bear baiting
hold as many as 850 bears captive. In 2002 WSPA donated to the Pakistani
government a bear sanctuary at Kund Park in the North West Frontier province
that WSPA built in 2000. After completion, the sanctuary stood empty for
several months, until exposes by the Daily Mail and The Independent led
to the exits of the two WSPA staff members who oversaw the construction
and management.
Marine
mammals
Liz
Sandeman, director of operations for the British charity The Marine Connection,
on April 4, 2005 announced that the Egyptian office of Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species management authority had provided “verbal
confirmation that Egypt will not allow future imports of marine mammals.”
This came two months after the El Salam Concorde Hotel in Sharm el Sheikh
allegedly imported two male dolphins and a sea lion. Added Sandeman, “Feel,
a female beluga currently held at Merryland in Cairo who was confiscated
from Dolphinella,” another Sharm el Sheikh attraction, “is expected
to return to Russia imminently following the death of her tank mate, Hook.”
A month later, seven months after the belugas were confiscated, Feel remained
at Merryland.
