Snake Campaign

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Check this out about our Snake Campaign!

 

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1044631

 

Regards,

Nilesh

PAWS

......................................................

 

Snake goes up the ladder

 

Deepa Suryanarayan

Sunday, July 30, 2006 23:06 IST

 

 

 

Every year around Nagpanchami, animal welfare activists play an

interesting game of snakes and ladders with snake charmers in the city.

The good news, say activists, is that the snakes finally seem to be

winning. On Sunday, the Bombay Society for Prevention of Cruelty to

Animals (BSPCA) rescued four snakes from Kurla and CST, said snake handler

Sunil Ranade who works with the BSPCA.

 

Snake charmers use the reptiles to make money during the Hindu snake

festival. “They earn up to Rs3,000 on Nagpanchami because people pay to

watch cobras drink milk,” Ranade said.

 

Thanks to the raids conducted by NGOs like the BSPCA and the Plant and

Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), the cruel practice of feeding milk to the

snakes has considerably reduced, activists say. “In 1996-97, 670 snakes

were seized in the raids. But last year (2005), we rescued just 30. The

number of snake charmers coming into the city is gradually going down,”

said Ranade.

 

Nilesh Bhanage, general secretary, PAWS-Thane said, “We have been

conducting raids since 1998. Then, we seized around 40 snakes on

Nagpanchami.” But last year, Bhanage’s team rescued one cobra. “On Sunday,

we found no snakes in Bhandup, Mulund, Kanjur Marg and Vikhroli,” said

Sunish Subramaniam of PAWS-Mumbai. “This is a good sign as it means snake

charmers are afraid of the law,” explained Bhanage. The Black cobra, a

species highly in demand on Nagpanchami, is usually caught from Rajasthan,

Punjab and Haryana.

 

“The snake charmers keep the snakes hungry for a month so that they can

drink the milk offered by the devotees; but, in fact, snakes cannot digest

milk. They also break their venomous fangs which make the snakes unable to

protect themselves. These snakes can’t be released back into the wild as

they cannot hunt,” explained Bhanage.

 

Wildlife activists say the snakes are bought for Rs400. “In the city they

fetch between Rs1,000 and Rs3,000,” said Ranade.

 

“After the festival, the snakes are killed and their skin sold a skin in

good condition can fetch as much as Rs3,000.”