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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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SEPTEMBER 2005
News from the islamic world
The World Wildlife Fund, which usually supports trophy hunting as a conservation strategy, is opposing a scheme advanced by Mumtaz Malik, chief conservator of Northwestern Frontier Province, Pakistan, to introduce trophy hunting for leopards. Officially, about 40 snow leopards survive in Pakistan, but hunters and herders claim there are 150-250. Two were shot in June after one snow leopard allegedly killed six women in two weeks by pouncing down on them from trees as they gathered firewood near Abbottabad. Malik claims to have saved markhor mountain goats, a prey species for snow leopards, by introducing markhor trophy hunting.
Thirty-five small herds totaling 155 markor, a mountain goat standing six feet tall at the shoulder, have recently been rediscovered near the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, India, from Pakistan. “As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian side,” reported Justin Huggler, Delhi correspondent for The Independent, “but by 1997 they had been poached to near extinction,” as troops and guerillas often turned their guns from fighting over the boundary to profiteering on the sale of the markors’ spectacular spiral horns.
The U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based in Hawaii but stationed in Afghanistan, recently rented 30 mules to haul food and water to Afghan and U.S. troops at isolated outposts in Kunar province, after the handlers received a crash course in mule care at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. This is believed to be the first U.S. military mule unit since the Army 35th Quartermasters Corps disbanded their mule teams in 1955, sending handler Warren Cox back to civilian life. Previously a dogcatcher in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cox returned to animal control work. Cox is now interim director of the Suncoast Humane Society in Englewood, Florida, his 22nd post in 53 years of animal work.
The International Network for Humane Education on June 20, 2005 started a Farzi web site, <www.InterNICHE.org/fa> to help Iranian schools teach the life sciences without using animal experiments.
Venturing to Pamplona, Spain, for the July 5 “Running of the Nudes” protest against the annual Pamplona bull-running festival, Animal Rights Action Network founder John Carmody and his friend Shane Kiely, both of Limerick, Ireland, anticipated a day in London before the last leg of their July 7 return trip. They had just stashed their bags in a locker at the King’s Cross subway station when the deadliest of the London Underground bombs detonated on the far side of a corridor wall. “The mayhem will stick in my mind for ages,” Carmody told the Limerick Post. Killing at least 52 people, the suicide bombings were apparently undertaken to protest British support of the U.S. presence in Iraq.
The United Arab Emirates on July 5, 2005 banned the use of camel jockeys under 18 years of age, a month after Qatar ordered that only robotic jockeys may be used after 2006. Child jockeys––who have no control over their mounts––often are used in camel racing. Many are hurt, some killed, and most are reputedly either bought or kidnapped from their parents in poor nations such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, then kept as virtual slaves. The government of Pakistan documented 287 kidnappings associated with Gulf states camel racing in one recent 10-month period. The UAE previously banned child camel jockeys in 1993, but the ban was not enforced.
Veteran Washington Post correspondent Pam Constable, frequently visiting Kabul, Afghan-istan since late 2001, in 2004 founded Tigger House, a dog-and-cat shelter and clinic serving the expatriate part of the city, with ambitions of extending outreach as security permits. Adoptions so far have mainly been to foreigners, “though we hope to attract more Afghan adopters in the future,” Constable told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Tigger House has also helped at least four U.S. soldiers to take adopted Afghan animals home, collaborating with Military Mascots, of Massachusetts. In June 2005 Constable incorporated a Virginia-based nonprofit support group for Tigger House called the Afghan Stray Animal League. [Contact the Afghan Stray Animal League and Tigger House c/o Constable, 3823 S. 14th St., Arlington, VA 22204.]