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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: MAY 2006
Global warming collides with humane concerns worldwide
A shipping pallet substituted for Noah’s Ark at the Cani-Bucarest shelter in Cernavoda,
Romania. The water rose a foot higher than this before subsiding. (Sara Turetta)
BELGRADE, CERNAVODA, FREIBERG, GALATI, SEATTLE–– Global warming collided with humane concerns along the Danube river in April 2006. Free dog and cat sterilization drives planned in several cities to stop the annual spring flood of puppies and kittens were hastily reorganized into response to the fourth round of severe spring flooding to hit parts of the Danube basin since 2000.
Sterilization surgery continued as best it could, interrupted by electricity blackouts, washed-out roads, and emergency demands on the already thin resources of regional humane societies.
The series of Danube disasters have followed intensified hurricane seasons in the southern U.S. in both 2004 and 2005, capped by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, plus exceptionally heavy 2005 monsoon flooding in India. The Danube flooding coincided with a bizarre mid-April 2006 flash flood along the Sabaki River in otherwise drought-stricken Kenya that caused more than 10,000 people to flee with their livestock. About 100 homes were ruined, said Associated Press, but apparently no one was killed.
The flooding of New Orleans by Katrina and Rita and the Indian monsoon floods have affected more people, but the Danube flooding has directly afflicted ten nations, more than any other obvious impact of global warming. For much of its distance the Danube marks the boundary between European Union members, with strict air pollution laws, and would-be members which have yet to effectively control coal smoke, the major source of so-called greenhouse gas emissions in Europe.
A 10-year comparative study of disasters from 1950 to 1998 by the German insurance company Munich Reinsurance recently found that the number of major floods worldwide has nearly quadrupled, from only seven to nine per decade before 1980, to 34 from 1989 to 1998.
The growing frequency and severity of disasters associated with global warming is bringing intense discussion among administrators of multinational charities and foundations of priorities, response capacity, and the possibility of donor fatigue. At the scene of each disaster, however––as the Katrina/Rita response showed––local charities and independent rescuers are acting with increasing self-confidence and know-how. The ad hoc Winn-Dixie rescue center set up by unaffiliated rescuers in a parking lot outside New Orleans, without big group direction, may become the new paradigm for animal relief work worldwide. Operating for more than a month longer than the official rescue centers, it probably handled a third of the total number of rescued animals.
Donors found and linked by Internet are responding positively to images of people helping animals––and each other––in scenes of evident peril, whether or not the big groups with formal protocols have completed their needs assessments.
Questions about what might become of broad philosophical missions to change the world if donors mostly turn to supporting hands-on crisis response have been asked at least since pioneering public health statistician Florence Nightingale headed into the field in 1858 to help wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. Nightingale was thoroughly denounced from church pulpits and in newspaper editorials for allegedly diverting volunteer support and donations from the flustered church-based anti-slavery, anti-war, and pro-women’s rights societies with which she was formerly associated.
Cani-Bucarest
Amid hell and high water, Danube region rescuers–– like their Katrina/Rita counterparts––ignored the strategic debate, if they were even aware of it, and focused on the job at hand. More than 16,000 people were evacuated from more than 150 Romanian communities, along with tens of thousands of farm animals and several thousand pets. Smaller evacuations occurred in seven other nations. Low-lying pounds often just let their animals go, or surging water tore down the fences.
Appearing to have learned from the Katrina experience, Rom-anian and Bulgarian soldiers reportedly helped evacuees to take their animals with them––a panic-stricken pig in one case, and in another, 250 sheep moved for a shepherd.
Though more than twice the normal water volume flowed down the Danube, timely evacuation prevented any human deaths. Flooding along tributaries killed at least 74 people in 2005.
Inundated humane societies hoped that increased community good will and visibility would compensate for the diversion and loss of resources. Taking in the pets of evacuees, some shelter directors hoped to sterilize more animals than they otherwise might have, if high water had not brought the animals to them––and if they could keep their surgical facilities operating.
“Bulldozers have worked nonstop for two days,” Sara Turetta of Cani-Bucarest e-mailed from Cernavoda in southern Romania on April 15. “Without the help of city hall, the situation would be worse,” Turetta continued. “Sixty dogs have been moved, puppies put inside, and the whole clinic surrounded by soil, stones and sandbags. We are asking companies to donate shipping pallets to make rafts for the dogs.”
Feeding the dogs became a further problem––and expense––as stores closed, cutting off the usual supply of scraps. A major donation of kibble, however, enabled Turetta to help others in Cernavoda to feed their dogs through the crisis.
“We have huge damages,” Turetta e-mailed on April 22, a week into the crisis but still six days before the Danube receded. “Many dogs are running outside the shelter because we have nowhere to put them. We are surrounded by a wall of water,” held back by an earth berm, which “could fall down at any moment, and then the whole shelter would be destroyed.”
Scheduled to deploy a mobile clinic on May 2, Cani-Bucarest was using the portable kennels that were to have been used for post-surgical recovery to house animals displaced by the flooding.
“We will be obliged to make massive structural repairs,” Turetta anticipated. “This is the worst moment in four years of activity in Romania,” during which Cani-Bucarest has sterilized more than 4,000 dogs.
“Yesterday one of our cats drowned,” Turetta finished.
Upstream
The Danube, the second longest river in Europe, winds for more than 1,700 miles across the bottom of a post-Ice Age inland sea. Winter snows in the Danube basin have historically melted slowly. In 2000, 2003, 2005, and now 2006, however, unusually fast melts have caused the Danube to spill over. This year the Danube flooded first in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia. Nine tributaries overflowed in Hungary, hitting 12 of the 20 Hungarian counties by April 7. A 15-kilometer section of highway south of Budapest was closed to enable wildlife to get to high ground.
Taking early warning, Serbian and Romanian farmers began evacuating animals from low ground near the Danube during the second week of April.
As the Kamenjar village area in northern Serbia flooded, ARKA founder Branka Pasco moved dogs to dry land.
“Basic things are needed, like blankets and clean water,” Jelena Zaricd of Belgrade e-mailed on behalf of ARKA on April 16.
World Society for the Protection of Animals disaster management director Mark Yates reported on April 20 that, “The Serbian SPCA shelter in Backa Topola has been badly damaged. Animals from the shelter are trapped in a barn,” Yates said, believing the count to be circa 200 dogs and 50 cats.
The Austrian-based multinational organization Vier Pfoten was “conducting searches and local assessments already,” Yates added, but Vier Pfoten as of April 29 had not yet posted any updates to their web site, issued any press releases, or responded to media inquiries.
Reuters reported from Rousse, Bulgaria, that horse carts were working alongside heavy machinery, amid a fuel shortage, to help plug leaky berms.
“We have been trying to plug a gap in a dike caused by badgers for four days now,” Rousse civil defense chief Stefko Burdzhiev told Reuters on April 20. The badgers had either drowned or departed.
On the Romaniian side of the Danube, “Authorities evacuated 3,200 people and more than 6,000 animals from the village of Rast,” Martin Dokoupil of Reuters reported. A week later the displaced people and animals were still huddled in muddy hillside tent cities.
Above Rast, and along the major Danube tributaries, the 2006 flooding was less than in 2005. Ecovet Timosoara founder Adriana Tudor, who led the first Romanian animal relief effort in 2005, told ANIMAL PEOPLE that there was no flooding near her. Nor did flooding hit Bucharest, said Fundatia Daisy Hope founder Aura Maratas, whose shelter flooded in 2005.
Below Rast, however, the 2006 flooding was worse, as dams and levees that withstood the previous floods fell like dominoes.
Cernavoda was hard-hit, where the Danube turns north to Braila and Galati, before veering east to Tulcea and the sea. Villages in Braila, Galati, and Tulcea counties were evacuated, while streets in much of Braila, Galati, and Tulcea cities were underwater for days.
At Galati the Danube crested 21 feet above normal, two feet above the 1897 old record.
The Galati animal aid organization Help Labus, believed to be on the flooded side of town, did not respond to e-mailed requests for information.
The Galati organization ROLDA found that coping with flash floods in 2005 was a useful rehearsal for the 2006 crisis. Located on a high hill, ROLDA helped residents to evacuate in both Galati and Braila––and had fortuitouly stockpiled extra supplies just before the flooding, for a free dog and cat free sterilization drive sponsored by Romania Animal Rescue, of California, assisted by the British-based Society for Protecting Animals Abroad and Mayhew Home for Animals. Volunteer vets from as far away as Alaska were already coming when the water rose.
Bug threat
A deadlier threat than the actual flooding, throughout the Danube basin and at similar latitudes worldwide, may be tick and mosquito-borne diseases. Tick-borne diseases, once rare, have felled several thousand Romanians and Bulgarians per year since the Danube floods started, including ROLDA cofounder Rolando Cep-raga, who collapsed in July 2005 while doing flood relief work at the older of the two Galati pound, and died on November 5.
The first outbreak of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus in Europe hit Romania in 1996, afflicting at least 400 humans. Malaria, a former mosquito-borne scourge of the region, appeared to be eradicated by 1971, but the World Health Organization reported in 2002 that “Since the early 1990s the malaria situation in the region has deteriorated considerably, owing to political and economic instability, massive population movement, and large-scale development projects.”
Reported Reuters on April 28, “TV footage has shown military helicopters spraying disinfectants and anti-mosquito insecticides onto villages over a 1,000-kilometer stretch of the river,” a response which may help to control the bugs but at possible cost to fish and birds.
But recurring outbreaks of the mosquito and biting fly-borne disease equine infectious anemia in Romania, and fear of more, in December 2004 caused the Euro-pean Union to reinforce inspection requirements on the export of horses from Romania to Italy for slaughter. In April 2006, the German/British organization Animals Angels disclosed on May 2, the traffic was halted, after horse dealers and transporters were repeatedly caught “recycling” inspection papers.
“In the past, 26,000 horses per year from Romania were transported,” Animals Angels managing director York Ditfurth said. “These journeys inflicted great pain and suffering on the animals, who were tightly crammed together in overloaded trucks, receiving neither food nor water. Now, Italian customers have to collect their meat in refrigerated transport trucks. We hope prices will increase and demand drop.”
Animals Angels had been exposing abuses in the horse traffic since 2000, which took advantage of the post-Communist era gradual mechanization of Romanian farms.
As each degree of increase in soil temperature brings an exponential rise in the hatching success of insects and arthopods, insect and tick-borne diseases are likely to continue their global spread.
The emergence of Lyme disease and ehrlichiosis in New England during the early 1980s, after milder winters and earlier snow melts, in hindsight appears indicative that ecological effects of global warming were already evident, about a decade before shrinking glaciers, pieces breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf, shifting ocean currents, recurring El Niño weather patterns in the eastern Pacific ocean, and melting Arctic Circle permafrost began to capture public attention.
Scientific warnings about an impending global warming trend caused by air pollution and deforestation were on page one of The New York Times as early as 1932, but the United Nations Environ-mental Program did not formally recognize the human role in global warming until 1995. The first international agreement to respond to global warming was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1996.
World Wildlife Fund Danube-Carpathian Program deputy director Andreas Beckmann and fresh water project manager Chris-tine Bratich hoped that the flooding would accelerate “practical implementation of the Lower Danube Green Corridor Agreement signed by Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine in 2000. Implementing the Lower Danube Green Corridor Agreement could significantly contribute to the creation of flood retention areas,” Beckmann and Bratich pointed out, while protecting habitat for more than 5,000 animal species, including more than 100 fish species and 320 bird species.
About 70% of the world population of white pelicans would benefit, Beckmann and Bratich said.
Looking ahead
Conservation organizations are beginning to realize that concern for animals motivates the public more to donate and write to politicians in response to global warming than any amount of discussion about the science of it.
The science, moreover, can be confusing, like the findings of a recent research trip that ranged from the Antarctic to Alaska, sponsored by the University of Washing-ton and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
The good news was that global warming appears to be self-correcting. The bad news was that the correcting process brings sea changes that may not be good for either humans or other animals.
“As humans pump out more carbon dioxide, helping to warm the planet,” explained Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Lisa Stiffler, “the ocean has been doing yeoman’s work to lessen the effects ––but over time, the mechanism could have an impact that ripples through the food chain. The Pacific is getting warmer and more acidic, while the amount of oxygen and the building blocks for coral and some kinds of plankton are decreasing.”
Added Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert Lee Hotz, “The researchers found that by 2002, Pacific gray whales were fleeing northward to feed in cooler currents, while pink salmon by the millions swarmed into warmer waters the whales had abandoned. Bottom-dwelling species, unable to adapt, were destroyed in large numbers. The broken shells of a vanished clam species carpeted the sea floor. As sea ice diminished, breeding grounds for seals were disrupted and populations fell. Polar bears started to drown. Walruses, used to diving in the shallows to feed along the sea bottom, found themselves adrift on broken ice floes in waters 6,500 feet deep. The animals starved.”
Added Doug Struck of the Washington Post, from Pangnir-tung, Canada, 30 miles below the Arctic Circle, “Robins, barn owls, and hornets, previously unknown so far north, are arriving in Arctic villages.”
At the far end of the globe, a review of climate trends by researchers at the University of South Africa in Cape Town predicted in March 2006 that the semi-arid parts of Africa, barely habitable by the numbers of people who live there now, will get 25% less rain in coming years. Even a 10% reduction could halve the amount of water reaching streams and watering holes.
The water shortage is likely to intensify the land use and access conflicts already underway between ancestral Africans and Arabs in the Darfur region along the border of Sudan with Chad, herders in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, and warring Somali tribes.
Global warming is not just an issue for environmentalists to worry about. It is now also central to concerns about world peace, human rights, social justice––and affects animal welfare.
––Merritt Clifton