Rescuing kites & other birds from kite string

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

 

 

Rescuing kites & other birds from kite string

 

AHMEDABAD--Power lines over Ahmedabad looked like concertina

wire after a World War I trench charge on January 15, 2007, the day

after Makar Sankranti, the Hindu " Festival of the Sun. "

Wrecked kites fluttered everywhere, trailing deadly loops of

glass-coated nylon twine. More than 100 Animal Help volunteers

answered calls about wounded birds. Twelve ambulance teams stationed

at central points around the sprawling city relayed birds to the

Animal Help Foundation hospital, beside the River Sabarmati.

For 11 months the 28 Animal Help veterinarians did Animal

Birth Control program surgery at an unprecedented pace, sterilizing

more than 45,000 dogs in retrofitted city buses. In early January,

however, the ABC program shut down, to enable Animal Help to

refocus on birds.

Makar Sankranti is celebrated in western India and nearby

parts of Pakistan with kite-flying contests. Tens of thousands of

participants send kites aloft over most major cities. Reputedly more

than a million kites soar over Ahmedabad.

The flyers try to work their strings so as to saw through the

strings of rival kites. Glass-coated nylon twine gives flyers an

edge over anyone using natural fibers. But the glass-coated nylon

twine also creates a hazard that London Zoo chief veterinarian Andrew

Routh told ANIMAL PEOPLE is unique in his experience of 30-odd years

of bird rescue.

Conventional tangling injuries occur to some extent, Routh

explained, and resemble those seen among cormorants, gulls, and

pelicans who run afoul of fly-fishers along trout streams. Yet those

are the least of the Makar Sankranti problem.

At Makar Sankranti, Routh demonstrated, kites lift sharp

strings under tension, so that they become " giant cheese-slicers in

the air. " Birds riding the wind currents or diving on prey then fly

into the " cheese-slicers " at great velocity, suffering shoulder and

arm cuts that resemble sword-fighting wounds or the leg injuries of

horses who gallop into barbed wire.

Suddenly unable to fly, they fall where they hit, not

always able to spread their feathers enough to cushion the impact.

If the cuts are clean enough and the birds are sewn back

together before injuring themselves, they usually recover well

enough to be released, after days or weeks of care.

Routh brought with him from the London Zoo fellow

veterinarian Sorn Routh, his Thai wife, and bird handler Natalie

Reed. They have all responded to avian disasters in many parts of

the world, Routh said, including oil spills involving dozens of

times more birds than the record 750-plus kite-injured birds that

Animal Help rescued this year in Ahmedabad. However, Routh added,

the Ahmedabad situation is both exceptionally challenging and

encouraging, from a veterinary perspective, because skilled

intervention does save significant numbers of birds.

More than half of the victims are black kite-birds, a

scavenger species seeming to be especially vulnerable to kite strings

because they tend to fly with their eyes on the ground instead of the

sky in front of them.

Perhaps a third of the victims are pigeons, the most common

species in Ahmedabad.

The remainder include some of almost every flying species:

fruit bats, peafowl, ring-necked parakeets, kingfishers, rollers,

bulbuls, barn owls, sandpipers, godwits, Egyptian vultures, even

endangered white-rumped vultures and Sarus cranes.

Jain rescue societies adopt the birds who cannot be released,

Animal Help founder Rahul Sehgal told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Now an avid birder, Sehgal, 32, admits that just three

years ago he didn't know one bird from another--but he saw the

problem, gambled that he could organize an effective response to it,

and hopes that similar response teams established in other cities can

raise public awareness to the point that the sale of glass-coated

plastic string will be banned.

Other kite injury response teams are fielded by CAPE-India of

Ludiana, under Sandeep K. Jain; the Karuna Trust, under Dharmendra

Sanghvi, whose teams worked this year in Thane, Surat, and Baroda;

and Help In Suffering, of Jaipur.

As in founding the Animal Help ABC program seven years ago,

and founding India's first specialized animal disaster relief agency

two years ago, called Animal Help in Emergencies And Disasters,

Sehgal drew inspiration from the official history of Ahmedabad.

Sultan Ahmed Shah established the Muzaffarid dynasty capital beside

the River Sabarmati in 1411, the story goes, because while camping

beside the river he saw a hare chase a dog. Shah determined that

this must be a place where brave and determined individuals could do

the impossible. --M.C.

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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