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The Watchdog monitors fundraising, spending, and political activity in the name of animal and habitat protection—both pro and con. His empty bowl stands for all the bowls left empty when some take more than they need.

April 2008

Nepalese royals misused National Trust for Nature Conservation, says audit report

KATHMANDU--A three-member audit committee on March 26, 2008 confirmed years of rumors that the Nepalese royal family had extensively misused the King Mahendra National Trust for Nature Conservation.

Examining financial records from 2000-2006, the audit committee reported that, "Millions [in Nepalese rupees] were spent on travels abroad and lavish parties," summarized the Nepal Horizons News Service, in an account also internationally distributed verbatim by the Indo-Asian News Service.

"Money meant for boosting Nepal's conservation efforts was instead spent by Queen Komal when she went to Britain for her annual health checkups; by King Gyanendra during his foreign trips during his army-backed absolute rule; and by Crown Prince Paras," Gyanendra's son, "who went to Austria and France with his wife and became embroiled in rhino diplomacy," the Nepal Horizons News Service said.

Gyanendra, the present king of Nepal, surrendered his reign in 2006. He headed the NTNC from formation in 1982 until his ascension to the throne in 2001, when Paras succeeded him in charge of the NTNC.

The NTNC audit report was released just two weeks ahead of an April 10, 2008 election, in which Nepalese voters are to decide whether to retain a constitutional monarchy or to become a democratic republic.

Charles Haviland, the Kathmandu correspondent for BBC News, questioned the sources and timing of the audit report.

"While many Nepalis will find the report plausible, it has not come from an entirely objective source," Haviland objected."All three of its authors are Maoists, as the ministry which controls the conservation trust is now headed by a minister from the former rebel group. A recent newspaper article alleged that the trust was now staffed with many Maoist supporters or activists who have minimal conservation expertise. The article said some foreign donors were suspending their co-operation as a result."

But the audit report allegations chiefly add detail to matters already on the public record.

Paras, recalled the Nepal Horizons News Service, "was sent to Austria in a bid to improve Nepal's strained ties with western governments after King Gyanendra seized power through a bloodless coup," soon after Crown Prince Dipendra, an avid hunter, on June 1, 2001 shot nine members of the royal family, including the previous king and queen, and then shot himself.

Paras and his wife took two endangered Nepalese one-horned rhinos to the Schonnbrun Zoo in Vienna. State-run Nepalese media depicted this as an official state visit, but international and independent media soon revealed that no ranking Austrian government representatives were involved.

"Since King Gyanendra's ascension to the throne," Nepal Horizons News Service continued, "the nature trust spent over one million Nepalese rupees on alcohol and hotel bills. Three laptops, a [desktop] computer, an air compressor and four vehicles," collectively valued at about $90,625, "were carted away by staff of Nirmal Niwas, the residence of the crown prince, and never returned."

Published NTNC financial statements from 2005 and 2006 show expenditures of $47,597 and $45,170 on "international promotion and travel," apart from other promotional costs, and $11,617 and $11,913 for "entertainment," but give no further details

."Much of the money released by the fund was used for entertaining the royal family," affirmed NTNC secretary in charge Bimal Kumar Baniya in a statement to news media.

Added the Nepal Horizons News Service, "The probe also found that after Crown Prince Paras was named in a hit and run accident, in which a popular folk singer was killed, money from the trust fund was used to repair Paras' damaged vehicle."

The accident, on August 6, 2000, was initially reported as Paras' second fatal hit-and-run while driving drunk, and later identified as his fourth.

The vehicle, a jeep, was registered to the NTNC. The victim, Prabin Gurung, was knocked off his motorcycle. A soldier, Khadka Bhujel, claimed to have been the driver, despite having no association with the NTNC. Gurung's widow issued a statement exonerating Paras after accepting cash compensation. Charges were filed against Bhujel, but were later withdrawn, after a month of public protests against the alleged cover-up.

The case became a landmark in the sequence of events leading to the 2006 loss of royal power. The royal handling of the case led to widespread skepticism of Paras' role as the only unscathed ranking survivor of the 2001 palace massacre.

Founded in 1982, the NTNC manages Nepalese wildlife and nature conservation projects, cultural heritage sites, ecotourism, and"sustainable development." The NTNC operates 16 national parks, the Central Zoo, the Nepalese access points for Himalayan climbing and trekking, and a major ender equality program that provides education and jobs for women, especially in rural areas.

The NTNC raised about $3 million in 2005, the last full year under royal control, and $3.7 million in 2006, dropping the royal name and affiliation in October 2006. About 40% of the NTNC income in 2005 and 2006 came from foreign grants and investment. Most of the remainder came from tourism fees.

King Mahendra ruled Nepal from 1955 until his death in 1972. He abolished all political parties in 1959 and reigned thereafter as an absolute monarch. Mahendra had no direct role in creating the NTNC, but was instrumental in the evolution of two of the most renowned NTNC holdings.

The Central Zoo, now attracting nearly 900,000 visitors a year, almost all of them Nepalese, was founded in 1932 as a private menagerie by then-prime minister Juddha Sumsher J.B. Rana. The Rana family dominated Nepalese politics for several decades before the re-ascendance of the monarchy in 1951. In a popular gesture symbolic of the Rana downfall, Mahendra opened the Central Zoo to the public in 1956.

Royal Chitwan National Park originated as a Rana hunting preserve. Mahendra designated part of it as a rhino sanctuary in 1963, and authorized the creation of the park, Nepal's first, in 1970, but died a year before it actually opened in 1973.

Representing Nepal in dealings with the World Wildlife Fund at least since 1976, Gyanendra with his wife Queen Komal Rajya Laxmi and his daughter Princess Perna in June 2002 sacrificed a buffalo, a goat, a sheep, a duck, and a pigeon at the Goddess Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, Assam. The actual killing was done by royal priest Acharya Raguhunath Aryal, who flew to Guwahati from Kathmandu for the ceremony.

Gyanendra returned the following day to sacrifice a second goat.

Gyanendra had previously sacrificed animals at the Kalighat temple in Kolkata, but "abstained from sacrifice" in Kolkata after protest greeted his visits, Compassionate Crusaders Trust founder Debasis Chakrabarti wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE in November 2004, and reaffirmed to the Indo-Asian News Service in November 2007.

Gyanendra continued to sacrifice animals in Nepal, however, killing a goat in October 2007 to initiate the annual Dashain sacrificial festival.

With the Nepalese parliament dissolved, Gyanendra in May 2004 decreed a "Wildlife Farming, Reproduction and Research" policy that authorized ranching barking deer, spotted deer, black buck, sambar, hog deer, wild boar, antelope, gharial crocodiles, and five species of pheasant, including the Impeyan pheasant--the national bird.

The Gyanendra government had already issued permits for commercially breeding rhesus macaques, snakes, and vultures.

The macaques are raised for export to U.S. laboratories, in collaboration with the University of Washington Regional Primate Research Center. The project, begun in September 2003, is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Only captive-bred macaques may be imported into the U.S., but after several years of constructing facilities, the Nepal Bio-Medical Research Center started breeding macaques in 2007 with 300 captured from the wild.

The snakes are raised for medicinal use, including both the production of antivenins and traditional remedies made from snake remains.

Efforts were apparently made to breed vultures in anticipation of a market for captive birds to facilitate "sky burial" by Parsees and others whose traditional disposal of human remains has been jeopardized by the declining Indian vulture population.

--Merritt Clifton

SPCA International founder Pierre Barnoti out as head of Canadian SPCA in Montreal

MONTREAL--Canadian SPCA president Pierre Barnoti has reportedly taken an indefinite sick leave, pending replacement, and board president Michel Poulos and treasurer Howard Scholzberg have resigned, CTV-Montreal reported on April 2, 2008.

Acting president Nancy Breitman disclosed to CTV that the Canadian SPCA is $4 million in debt, and is in danger of bankruptcy.

Founded in 1869, the Canadian SPCA is the oldest in Canada, but has historically served only Montreal and nearby suburbs. It operates shelters on the island of Montreal and in Laval, just north of Montreal.

Early in his tenure Barnoti tried to establish control of humane investigations throughout Quebec. Province-wide authority over humane investigations was eventually given to a new government-created nonprofit corporation called Anima Quebec, under auspices of the provincial department of agriculture.

Barnoti, Poulos, and Scholzberg departed after recent former board member Neil Halsey and three other Canadian SPCA members on March 19, 2008 called a special board meeting to address issues including Barnoti's failure to produce an annual report for the 2006-2007 fiscal year in a timely manner.

They had requested access to the Canadian SPCA membership mailing list, which they were entitled to see under the Canadian Corporations Act, and were finally allowed to see it, but only to take notes, they said in a joint media release. They were not allowed to copy the list.

A meeting to select Barnoti's successor was scheduled for April 9.

Barnoti had headed the Canadian SPCA, also known as the Montreal SPCA, since 1995. He claimed to have increased the donor base from just 700 to 127,000, but his aggressive mailings were in 2006 denounced by other Canadian humane societies from Nova Scotia to Edmonton. Using the Canadian SPCA name and soliciting donations to be sent to local post office boxes, the mailings were said to give donors an erroneous impression that the organization is active nationally.

While that controversy simmered, Barnoti formed a nonprofit organization calling itself SPCA International in the U.S., with a New Hampshire post office address. SPCA International rapidly negotiated mergers with several small U.S. animal charities, as ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in November 2007, acquiring their history and record of achievement while SPCA International itself was still less than one year old.

In one instance, SPCA International created a program called Baghdad Buddies which closely resembled the Military Mascots project founded by Bonnie Buckley of Merrimac, Massachusetts, but which Buckley believed might jeopardize the connections through whom she helps U.S. soldiers to bring pets home from Iraq.

Barnoti is now expected to make developing SPCA International his fulltime occupation.

Chimp Haven leadership dispute ends; Chimp Haven appeals verdict favoring Primarily Primates

KEITHVILLE, La.--A lawsuit among the founders of the Chimp Haven sanctuary for retired laboratory chimpanzees was on February 14, 2008 quietly dismissed by the Caddo District Court at request of the plaintiffs.

"According to court documents, Cathe Neukum, one of the plaintiffs, appeared in court to say she no longer wishes to pursue the claims," reported Vickie Welborn of the Shreveport Times on March 27.

Neukum, Chimp Haven founding executive director Linda Koebner, and six coplaintiffs including ex-board members and volunteers sued founding president Linda Brent and board chair Tom Butler in Nov-ember 1996 for alleged mismanagement. "The parties reached a mutual agreement to dismiss the lawsuit," plaintiffs' attorney Julie Blewer told Welborn. Blewer did not offer details.

The settlement came to light after Chimp Haven appealed a February 2008 order from Bexar County Judge Michael Peden to return to Primarily Primates seven chimpanzees who were transferred to Chimp Haven in November 2006. Primarily Primates was at the time in court-appointed receivership.

Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral told John Andrew Prime of the Gennett news service that the Bexar County Court court has ordered Chimp Haven to pay Primarily Primates' attorneys' fees through every stage of the appeal.

The chimps are the survivors of a colony formerly kept at Ohio State University. They were retired by OSU to Primarily Primates in February 2006, with an endowment for their housing and upkeep. PETA and researcher Sally Boysen opposed sending the chimps to Primarily Primates.

Two chimps died from pre-existing heart conditions soon after arrival at Primarily Primates.

PETA then funded an unsuccessful lawsuit that sought to move the survivors to Chimp Haven, and forwarded allegations from two former Primarily Primates employees --both fired for cause--to the Texas Office of Attorney General, leading to the receivership. The receivership ended in May 2007, after the Texas Office of Attorney General agreed in an out-of-court settlement to "fully and completely release, acquit, and forever discharge Primarily Primates" from the allegations.

Friends of Animals then completed a merger with Primarily Primates, which had been pending, and now manages the sanctuary.

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on January 16, 2008 upheld the transfer of the OSU chimps to Primarily Primates.