(CN) Animal Welfare

[Guest guest]

Public outrage over a hunting reserve offers activists hope for a new

awareness of animal rights

South China Morning Post

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BEHIND THE NEWS

by Dinah Gardner

Jan 07, 2008

 

 

A grinning man clad in army fatigues brandishes a rifle, a dead boar lies at

his feet. Leaves are stuck to his hunting helmet and an ammunition belt

stuffed with gun cartridges hugs his portly waist. His image, plastered all

over Beijing's subway, is the face of a new hunting reserve, a half day's

drive from the capital.

East International Hunting Place, which allows guests to shoot deer, wild

boar, foxes, pheasants and endangered leopards, sprawls over a so-called

protected primeval forest near Taiyue Mountain in Shanxi province . " You

will find boundless joy in hunting here, " the reserve's website boasts.

 

 

While the park's investors are hoping hunting will become the new golf for

China's nouveaux riches, a media backlash against the advert may be one of

the first signs that mainlanders are slowly gaining a passion for animal

welfare.

 

" It's disgusting, " the Beijing Morning Post quoted one commuter as saying.

Another asked: " What age are we in? Time is running out for the world to

save wild animals and then to put such a poster in the subway advertising

the killing of animals for entertainment. "

 

Cao Jieming, an environmental activist and former editor-in-chief of the

magazine Greenness, pointed out the irony of setting up a hunting park for

the rich to ride around in jeeps and chase animals with dogs, while the

country's wildlife was increasingly threatened by urbanisation and

population pressures.

 

" Many of China's environmental protection laws exist only on paper; they are

never put into practice, " Mr Cao said. " So now we have the absurd situation

where in a country which has national-level legislation on animal protection

you have a hunting park advertised in the subway. Don't you think it is very

bold and outrageous? "

 

The media tongue-lashing against East Hunt is not an isolated case. On

Christmas Day, the press was again up in arms after 16 puppies, baby rabbits

and hamsters were crushed to death on a Beijing street as police arrested a

couple for illegally hawking the pets. The traders and police accuse each

other of killing the animals. A few days later, the public was shocked again

when a zoo in Hebei province was ordered to close after one of its rare

Siberian tigers was found beheaded and skinned.

 

This media outrage is seen by some animal welfare officials as an

encouraging sign that the mainland public is getting behind the idea of

protecting wildlife.

 

" The media is starting to challenge such things [like the hunting reserve], "

said Jeff He, communications manager at the Beijing office of the

International Fund for Animal Welfare.

 

He said the violent tone of the advert really offended some people. It

advertised " genuine guns and real bullets ... so it's not only about animal

welfare, it's also about people's security and this [ad] totally goes

against President Hu Jintao's message of a harmonious society. It's the most

inharmonious thing ever. "

 

According to some wildlife experts, almost 40 per cent of mammal species in

China are endangered, with Tibetan antelope, wild yak, sheep, wolves and

tigers topping the list of threatened animals. Last year a similar public

outcry - in the press and on the internet - resulted in the State Forestry

Administration, which oversees wildlife protection, abandoning a plan to

auction off licences to hunt wild animals, some of them endangered.

 

The hunting licences give the owner the right to kill certain species from a

list of more than 200 animals, including many endangered in the remote

western provinces and regions of Qinghai , Shaanxi , Gansu , Ningxia and

Xinjiang .

 

Mr He said that last year the administration sold the permits quietly behind

the scenes, but the public criticism forced the agency to back down from its

initial proposal to hold a public auction. " It was so spontaneous - the

media challenging the administration's plan to auction the hunting

licences, " Mr He said.

 

Such public outcries are not just evidence of a growing support for animal

conservation, they also show a rising consciousness of the need to stamp out

animal cruelty.

 

Lu Di, a professor in communications at Tsinghua University, said that urban

Chinese had become more supportive of the animal welfare cause in recent

years.

 

" I think there are two main reasons for this, " he said. " As Chinese society

becomes more open, we have more exposure to these ideas through books,

movies, documentaries. All this is making a better environment to get people

interested in animal welfare.

 

" Also, the government has been making an effort to develop laws and policies

to help protect endangered species - and making more effort to enforce these

laws. There are still weak links and areas that need to be improved such as

educating people who live in the countryside. "

 

China has no national-level animal welfare protection law. In 2004, it

scrapped draft animal rights legislation, arguing the public wasn't ready -

there were concerns over enforcement and the cost to farmers and animal

experimental facilities for improving living conditions for livestock.

 

The country has long been criticised for its appalling animal rights record.

Visitors to safari parks such as the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin ,

Heilongjiang , can pay to watch tigers tear into goats and cattle dumped

live into their pens. Performing animals such as bears are regular

entertainment at zoos and parks.

 

Most notorious is the practice of extracting bile from bears on farms - a

painful process which involves carving a hole into the animal's abdomen to

" milk " off the valuable liquid, an ingredient used in traditional Chinese

medicine. And while toy-sized pooches are the pets of choice for middle

class urbanites, the skinned corpses of dogs and cats at meat markets have

shocked foreigners visiting the mainland. But things may be changing.

 

Two weeks ago, Henan became the first province to test a draft humane

slaughter law, mostly involving pigs, which is expected to be launched

nationwide this year. State media reported that the central province, which

produces about 10 per cent of the country's pork, will require animal

traders to ban the use of Tasers on the animals and enforce a faster

slaughter time once they are unconscious.

 

" At the psychological level, Chinese people are ready to embrace an animal

welfare law nationwide, " Mr He said.

 

As well as public anger at such practices as hunting, growing awareness is

evident in the number of new animal welfare groups. The Chinese Companion

Animals Protection Network, an umbrella organisation for animal welfare

bodies in China, said that by last August it had some 40 group members.

 

" All of these incremental changes indicate that the Chinese public and

government agencies are becoming more and more aware how improving the

animals' situation would eventually benefit our society, " Mr He said.

 

Some observers view the nascent animal welfare movement as coming from the

increasing popularity of keeping pets as incomes rise.

 

" People's quality of life is rising and they have time to think about how we

treat animals, " said Zhang Ling of the China Wildlife Conservation

Association.

 

Mr Cao said concerns about the deteriorating environment had encouraged more

people to take a stand on wildlife protection. " It is not a slow

realisation, " he said. " It is a panic. "

 

Mr He said the public's changing sentiment went further than that. " We are

just becoming more connected with the rest of the world and we are beginning

to realise there are better choices out there in the way we treat animals. "

he said.

 

In some ways, he added, it's a return to traditional Chinese ethics which

stressed harmony and respect in the way humans should treat other living

things.

 

" The cultural revolution crushed that belief system, " Mr He said. " As

society is becoming more open and free we are beginning to retrace what we

used to have. "