Guest guest Posted March 31, 2007 Report Share Posted March 31, 2007 From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007: Getting the show off the road Dancing bears, monkey acts, and big cats leaping through hoops of fire are almost history now in India, where such acts appear to have started in Vedic times, spreading throughout the world. Some dancing bears, monkeys, and circus lions, tigers, and leopards are still on the back roads, or are stashed in sheds by exhibitors who imagine that the Wild Life Protection Act of 1972 might be repealed or amended, but for most the show is over. The Supreme Court of India turned out the lights on May 1, 2001. Six years later, the significance of the Supreme Court ruling against traveling animal shows is just becoming evident, as the possible foundation of a paradigm shift in Indian and perhaps global attitudes toward keeping wildlife in captivity. More than 280 lions, 40 tigers, and scores of aging ex-performing bears are living out their lives at Central Zoo Authority-accredited Animal Rescue Centres near Agra, Bangalore, Bhopal, Chennai, Jaipur, Tirupati, and Visakhapatnam. Other are being built. The lions, tigers, and bears at the rescue centers are the last captive generation of their kind. None have been legally bred in six years. Because no more big cats and bears are to be bred for show or sale, the pretense of captive breeding can no longer be used as legal cover for taking more from the wild. Capturing bears, monkeys, lions, and tigers for exhibition was outlawed in India by the Wild Life Protection Act 1972. Before 2001, however, the law was often circumvented by poachers who killed mothers, stole babies, and sold the babies to exhibitors as captive-born. There is still a small market for captured baby bears and big cats to be smuggled abroad, or to be kept as illegal pets, and there is biomedical research demand for rhesus macaques, but exhibiting animals for entertainment requires visibility. Some exhibitors still take the chance of acquiring and exhibiting a bear illegally taken from the wild, but in much of India, to visibly possess bears, big cats, or monkeys is now to court arrest and confiscation--unless one happens to be a biomedical researcher. Someone in every crowd has a cell telephone camera. Every Internet café offers the opportunity to electronically transmit evidence to law enforcement agencies-and to People for Animals, the largest Indian animal rights group, or to PETA-India, the largest PETA overseas subsidiary, or to local animal advocacy groups. Helping to encourage intervention on behalf of captive wildlife are hundreds of school animal rights clubs, encouraged by local chapters of PfA. Several thousand school children in each major city have been taught to be vigilant against animal abuse, including traveling animal acts, for whom children are the primary audience. With the cities becoming dangerous venues for illegal exhibitors, only those who work the most remote rural areas have much chance to stay in business, moving from village to village, hoping to bluff down anyone who asks questions with the pretense of having government permits that do not exist. The Kalandar circus clan, whose seasonal wanderings with bears and other animals named the wall calendar, are beginning to taking up other employment, after centuries on the road. For the Central Zoo Authority, keeping ex-performing animals at accredited Animal Rescue Centres is--depending on which members speak--either the beginning of a transition of mission, or a distraction from promoting species conservation, in the global mode of the past several decades. The contradiction between operating mostly off-exhibit hospices for ex-performing animals and promoting captive breeding to attract paying audiences is causing Indian zoo management to reconsider and debate what their roles should be in the 21st century. While American and European zoos have mostly rejected animal advocates' hope that they should evolve into sanctuaries, the Animal Rescue Centres are sanctuaries. Though mostly not open to the public, they are among the best-known and most praised zoo projects in India. Ahead is the question of what the Animal Rescue Centres should evolve into, after facilities built to serve for decades outlive their first animal inhabitants. Should they become off-exhibit conservation breeding facilities? Adjuncts to the existing zoos? Or should they continue in an expanded sanctuary role? The rising discussion in India challenges an appearance of consensus reached among the international zoo community after the United Nations-brokered Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species in 1973 officially ended worldwide the so-called " Bring 'em back alive! " era of wildlife capture for exhibition. More than half of all the animals who were captured to be brought back alive did not survive capture and transport, putting the survival of many rare species in jeopardy. To counter growing public recognition that capture for exhibition was a major cause of species endangerment, and to avoid the risk of U.S. zoos running out of crowd-pleasing species, the American Zoo Association advanced the notion of zoos becoming conservation breeding repositories. As this idea gained popularity, international zoo associations jumped on the bandwagon, even though conservation breeding in zoos was then mostly just a hope. Only one species, the North American bison, had ever been restored to the wild from zoo stock. The AZA created Species Survival Plans for many of the rarest animals in captivity, consisting of stud books and breeding exchange agreements. Zoo publicists encouraged the idea that some descendents of animals in the Species Survival Plans might eventually be re-introduced to the wild, to replenish extirpated populations. Some species have been reintroduced using zoo specimens, notably the blackfooted ferret, Mexican grey wolf, red wolf, California condor, and golden lion tamarin. (The North American grey wolf, taken off the federal endangered species list in March 2007, was reintroduced using wild-trapped animals.) Mostly, though, the Species Survival Plans have been means of perpetuating captive populations of animals who cannot be replaced from the wild--except under hard-to-get conservation research permits. These have been most prominently used to import panda bears from China through breeding loans that have paid China up to a million dollars a year per bear couple, while producing very few offspring born outside of China. Captive breeding as a conservation strategy is still a shaky concept. Both Asian and African elephants, for example, are in steep decline in captivity because zoos have not managed to curb infant mortality. Captive-reared animals of many species turn out to lack parenting skills and any semblance of ability to fend for themselves in the wild. Conservation breeding still resonates as a raison d'etre with the public, but while touting the few successes, U.S. and European zoos have gradually shifted the emphasis of their conservation programs--beyond public education--to field work. The prevailing current concept among zoological conservationists is that zoo animals are ambassadors for their wild kin, helping to raise funds to study wild populations and preserve wild habitat. But the amount of money actually raised for field work is small compared to the cost of operating a zoo. The Wildlife Conservation Society, by far the largest zoological contributor to overseas programs, in 2005 spent about $95 million to run the four New York City zoos and the New York Aquarium, allocating $48.5 million to field work: 34%. Conservation International, funding similar work, raised and spent nearly twice as much without running a zoo. Spot-checking major zoos' IRS Form 990 filings, ANIMAL PEOPLE found no others spending even half as large a percentage of budget on external projects as the Wildlife Conservation Society. Hybrids Indian zoos rhetorically embraced the species survival breeding concept without quite understanding it. Unable to induce many genuinely endangered indigenous species to breed in dreary steel-and-cement cages that often date back to British rule, and typically working independently of international Species Survival Plan protocols, some Indian zoos prolifically produced hybrid animals whose births brought headlines, yet no authentic conservation value. The Chhatbir Zoo in Chandigar, for example, bred more than 80 African/Asian lion hybrids. After the offspring of the original pairings mostly failed to thrive, and more than 30 died in 1999 and 2000, the program ended with the sterilization of all the males. As of September 2006 there were 21 survivors still at the zoo. The Delhi Zoo specialized in producing albinos of a wide range of species, much to the frustration of People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi. But at least one bizarre breeding experiment was stopped early by the Central Zoo Authority. Circa 1989 the Byculla Zoo in Mumbai acquired a " hobra, " a male hybrid of a horse and a zebra bred by a circus. After the CZA ordered that hybrid animals could no longer be exhibited, the hobra lived for 16 years in a 30-foot-long enclosure at the zoo hospital. He died at age 24 in August 2005, thwarting a two-year PETA campaign to have him sent to a sanctuary. Indian zoos still have a minimal role in authentic Species Survival Plans. Most still fall well short of international standards--but the Central Zoo Authority has tried to encourage improvement. The CZA hoped that closing the notoriously deficient Pratep Sinhav Udyan Zoo in Sangli in 2005 would send a message to other bad zoos to shape up. But the Central Zoo Authority has limited ability to close zoos, no matter how bad they are. The fundamental problem is that closing a zoo requires having somewhere else to send the animals. Better zoos usually lack the space to take in more animals, especially those of large and abundant species. The American Zoo Association and European Zoo Association model for zoo self-improvement begins with reducing collections, so as to provide better conditions for the remaining animals. But contrary to American and European advice, acceding to public expectations, Indian zoos do often try to accept all animals in need. At the Delhi Zoo, for instance, Bindu Shajan Perappadan of The Hindu reported in May 2006, 30 of the 134 resident species were represented by more than 150 rescue cases, including six sloth bears, two leopards, and three elephants. " The Delhi Zoo has been taking in rescued animals, including monkeys, donkeys, elephants, reptiles, and birds, all year round, " director D.N. Singh said. " These animals cannot be kept with the other inhabitants due to the fear of them transmitting infections or causing fights, though some rescued animals have been exhibited after a quarantine. " Singh complained to The Hindu, he said, after being " burdened with responsibility for an elephant, " rescued by People for Animals, who " was being regularly beaten by the mahout with an iron spike. The elephant was found in a malnourished state, dehydrated, " with foot injuries and osteoporosis, " which makes her unsuitable for display. We are not a rescue center, " Singh emphasized. Responded Central Zoo Authority member secretary B.R. Sharma, " While evaluating the Delhi Zoo, it was observed that it was being used as a rescue centre despite not having adequate space. We have written to all the states, " Sharma said, " informing them that in case they are short of funds for setting up [an official Animal Rescue Centre], CZA would support them with 100% funding, so that there is no pressure on the zoos to keep rescued animals. " The availability of funding for Animal Rescue Centres of course gives zoos a strong incentive to become more seriously and deliberately involved--like the Birsa Munda Zoological Park near Ranchi in Jharkhand. The Birsa Munda Zoo was already considering adding an Animal Rescue Centre, reported the Indo-Asian News Service, but " The project picked up momentum [in August 2006] after six big cats were shifted to Visakhapatnam, " by order of the Central Zoo Authority, " following the death of six others due to disease. " The disease was babeosis, a tick-borne infection similar to Lyme disease, borealosis, ehrlichiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. These diseases notoriously produce symptoms that masquerade as more familiar conditions. " All of our animals are healthy, " insisted Birsa Munda Zoo veterinary director Dinesh Kumar, to Telegraph of India writer Arti Sahuliyar. " It is only the rescued animals brought from outside who carry diseases, " said Kumar. Allowed Sahuliyar, " The officials here really have no reason to rejoice when rescued animals are brought. With no adequate facilities available for their treatment, the zoo is more like a dumping space than the protective shelter it should be. Home already to about 500 mammals and 300 birds, the zoo is hardly in a position to look after them. The animal hospital has doctors and caretakers, but no permanent compound, lab technicians, pathologists, equipment, or X-ray facilities. " Birsa Munda Zoo director Deepak Singh told Sahuliyar that the zoo was short 41 staff positions. " We are trying to make a quarantine ward so that rescued animals, brought from outside, can be kept there and not be mixed with the herd here, " Singh said. Future roles The need for Animal Rescue Centres is big enough that expanding the rescue network could become the focal job of the Central Zoo Authority, and the star role of the leading members, as it already is for some, including the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in Visakhapatnam, one of the few Indian zoos which can claim global stature. The possibility that zoos might refocus on rescue inspires animal advocates but dismays zoo directors, many of whom have hoped to emulate western zoo management. As the former circus animals now populating Animal Rescue Centres die, more animals from substandard zoos might take their places. This too is a controversial idea, as many zoo directors would prefer to avoid inheriting other zoos' problems, and have misgivings about seemingly participating in cannibalizing colleagues. Underlying the management level anxiety is that for more than 30 years, professional stature in the zoo community has centered on managing successful breeding programs. The rarer the species whom a zoo induces to breed, the higher the prestige of the zoo. First-tier zoos produce Species Survival Plan offspring; others exhibit their genetically redundant surplus. To focus on housing older animals from closed circuses and bad zoos would be to gain the opportunity to lead the zoological world in developing knowledge about geriatric wildlife care, but elder care--though increasingly recognized as necessary in western zoos--does not attract media attention to nearly the extent as does holding cute babies. Even after there are neither former circus animals nor former zoo animals left to house, the Animal Rescue Centres may still have a role, taking in big cats and other wild animals who come into conflict with humans and livestock--as many Indian zoos already do, if the animals are captured alive. Recently the public and political demand for facilities to house problem wildlife has expanded to include street-dwelling rhesus macaques, who resist relocation to rural areas by returning to cities, and rogue elephants, amid exposés of cruelty at the " elephant camps " run by state forestry departments. Originally built to house working logging elephants, the elephant camps now hold several hundred permanently out-of-work elephants. Many were addicted to alcohol by their former mahouts, as a reward to keep them working. Some were at least once returned to the wild, but failed to re-adapt, after long captivity. Most of the present Animal Rescue Centres were built to house predators. If monkeys and elephants are added, new facilities will have to be constructed. Relocating rogue wildlife to the Animal Rescue Centres appears to be politically popular, since it would take the onus off of public officials for killing rare animals. In theory, zoos managing Animal Rescue Centres could combine the new job of housing dangerous wildlife with their declared mission of captive breeding, hoping to eventually replenish wild populations in protected habitat. Tigers, for example, could be reintroduced to the renowned Sariska tiger reserve, from which they were poached out in 2003, if Sariska can be restored to a viable size, prey base, and level of security. Yet there is so little chance of reintroducing any species now kept at Animal Rescue Centers, against against strong local political opposition to reintroduction of predators, that the centers would probably remain care-for-life sanctuaries, whether or not they fully accept the role. Further, some conservationists worry that if politicians get the idea that all dangerous wildlife can go to Animal Rescue Centres, encroachment into protected habitat will accelerate, until the centers become as overcrowded as the zoos whose capacity they are augmenting, and all reserves go the way of Sariska. But some animals are being released from Animal Rescue Centres, including nearly 100 sambar and spotted deer, 800 star tortoises, and numerous birds who have been rehabilitated by the Animal Rescue Centre at Kodanad, in Kerala state. This rescue center, however, is operated by a state forestry department mini-zoo, not a full-scale zoo--and the deer were born on the premises, from a handful of ancestors who were fenced in to attract visitors more than 20 years ago. The Supreme Court of India ruling of May 1, 2001 only freed tigers, lions, leopards, monkeys and bears from performing and traveling with Indian circuses. Effecting a paradigm shift in the roles of zoos and perhaps in Indian wildlife conservation policy was scarcely envisioned in reportage at the time--except by People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi. Then Indian federal minister for animal welfare, Mrs. Gandhi has long recommended that zoos should exist only as sanctuaries and educational institutions. As a newspaper columnist before entering politics, more than 20 years ago, observing zoos rushing to embrace conservation breeding as their purported central purpose, Mrs. Gandhi predicted that captive breeding would probably only perpetuate the practice of producing cute babies for exhibit, doing nothing to rejuvenate wild populations. Within India, she was right. Not one Indian species has been reintroduced from zoo stock. Ruling in Mrs. Gandhi's favor, the Supreme Court dismissed a decade of litigation by the Indian Circus Federation, and upheld a 1991 order that the tigers, lions, leopards, monkeys, and bears in their possession must be retired, issued by Mrs. Gandhi when she was minister of forests. Mrs. Gandhi suggested that taking in the former circus animals would be part of reforming the mission and operation of zoos, in part by increasing the obligation of the national government to assist the work she saw as zoos' legitimate role. Mrs. Gandhi personally directed only the first part of the federal response to the Supreme Court ruling, while being rapidly transferred--with the animal welfare ministry--through several different cabinet posts. A bizarre coalition of science and superstition, representing both biomedical researchers and practitioners of animal sacrifice, ousted her from the cabinet and stripped her of the animal welfare ministry in mid-2003. But by then the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling had gained independent momentum. --Merritt Clifton -- 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 [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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