Elephant runs amok, kills two mahouts in Kottayam | Manorama News

Two mahouts were killed by captive elephant which ran amok at Karukachal near kottayam on Thursday. The deceased have been identified as Gopinathan Nair and Kannan. The elephant was brought to load wooden logs from a residential compund at Champakkara.

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Sonoma Stories: A new veterinarian and a rescued elephant, plucked rabbits and whale sushi

There’s a new veterinarian in Sonoma County, one who might take to treating pampered pets if she weren’t so busy advocating for caged backyard lions, chained and trained elephants and other animals whose suffering at human hands can be unspeakable.

Heather Rally always knew she wanted to work with animals.

“My mother will tell you I popped out that way,” said the 31-year-old transplant from Southern California and newcomer to Sebastopol.

She said her destiny as an animal welfare activist was sealed as she watched in anguish the 2009 documentary “The Cove,” which details the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

Today, Rally works full time for the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, also known as the PETA Foundation. Her primary focus is advocacy for captive wildlife kept in roadside menageries, circuses and private homes.

She thinks most people would be surprised knowing how many lions and bears are detained as pets or in wildlife exhibits.

“There are states where you can literally have anything in your living room with zero regulation,” she said.

She and PETA get involved upon evidence the animals are suffering from abuse or neglect. In one case, Rally said, she documented the mistreatment and deteriorating health of Nosey, an African elephant long kept by a traveling circus. Last year, authorities seized Nosey and moved her from Alabama to a sanctuary in Tennessee.

Investigations and advocacy of that sort are what occupy most of Rally’s attention as the supervising veterinarian of the PETA Foundation’s Captive Animal Law Enforcement division. But a new PETA video features Rally taking up the cause of animals far different from a circus elephant.

Rally traveled to a rural area outside of Shanghai, China, on behalf of a global garment retailer that had been assured rabbits raised for angora fur were treated humanely. Rally documented the opposite.

She said she watched in revulsion as factory farm workers plucked the fur of tied rabbits in clear agony. “The scream these rabbits emit is just horrifying,” she said.

Shown video of the practice, the people running the clothing retail business halted its sales of angora and donated all of its angora products to Syrian refugees.

Rally’s video on angora is featured in a 10-part PETA series, “PETA Reveals: Everybody’s Got a Story.”

Rally said that though rabbits continue to be plucked in China, oftentimes right next to ones being humanely sheared, more than 300 retailers have agreed to no longer purchase and sell angora. Just last month, the luxury brand Coach announced its adoption of a fur-free policy.

Rally grew up near the ocean. Not surprisingly, she said, “Marine mammals hands down are my greatest passion.”

While studying veterinary medicine at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, she received hands-on training at the National Wildlife Health Center in Honolulu, the Fort MacArthur Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro and Marin County’s Marine Mammal Center.

In 2010, Rally joined up with activists who’d filmed “The Cove” to investigate a claim that a Japanese restaurant at the Santa Monica airport was serving whale meat in violation of federal law.

She recalled, “My first reaction was, ‘This isn’t real. Not at the Santa Monica Airport.’ ”

Working alongside investigators with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Rally and a second woman went into the restaurant — called Hump — and posed as diners interested in eating the most exotic seafood available.

Rally said the sushi chef was wily but she and the other woman were persistent. At last, she said, the chef left the restaurant, walked to a parked Mercedes and took something from an ice chest in his car.

Served the delicacy, the women secretly wrapped some in a napkin for testing.

“It ended up being an endangered species of whale,” Rally said.

Federal officers arrested the chef on suspicion of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act by serving Sei whale. The story made the New York Times.

The next week, “The Cove” won the Academy Award for best documentary.

The story of the undercover operation that led to the shuttering of the Hump restaurant was included in the 2015 documentary by the Oceanic Preservation Society, “Racing Extinction,” which was nominated for an Oscar.

Rally completed her studies in 2014 and became a wildlife veterinarian. She was on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, becoming acquainted with the rainforest destruction caused by palm oil producers, when she met her future husband, conservationist Shayne McGrath.

It was his work that prompted the couple’s move to Sonoma County. Rally said she expects to become active in local animal welfare efforts once she becomes familiar with them.

As devoted as she is to working with animals, she said it’s also essential to help educate and galvanize humans to be more conscious of the impact their food, clothing and entertainment choices have on animals.

“Any time they pay for anything,” Rally said, “they are voting for the kind of future they want.”

You can reach columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.

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Chinese Firm to Build US $40 Million Elephant Conservation, Breeding Center in Laos

A Chinese state-owned enterprise said on Saturday that it will build a U.S. $40 million elephant conservation and breeding center in northwestern Laos’ Sayaboury province and develop it into a for-profit tourist attraction by the end of the year.

At a celebration of the first World Elephant Day in the province on Aug. 12, the Sino-Lao Tourism Investment and Development Company Ltd., announced its plans to build the center in Sayaboury city for a species that has become increasingly scarce in the Southeast Asian country.

Company manager Mu Yian Yu told attendees through an interpreter that the company will invest $40 million in building the conservation center during the upcoming dry weather season which begins after October.

“The Sino-Lao Tourism Investment and Development Company will develop the center this year,” he said, adding that provincial officials have granted the firm a 50-year land concession for the center.

“In two years we will have boats, hot air balloons, and elephant shows,” he said.

A Sayaboury official, who requested anonymity, said the Chinese firm is building the elephant center as a tourist attraction.

“They are developing a tourist attraction in Sayaboury about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from here,” he said.

“It will be a big business,” he said. “The Chinese investor has already done some publicity. It’s all business nowadays. They are doing it for profit. Now they are spending U.S. $900 to feed a single elephant each month.”

The company rented about 50 elephants from Sayaboury residents for an event that attracted about 500 people to mark World Elephant Day, which was established on Aug. 12, 2012, to call attention to the plight of Asian and African elephants at risk because of illegal poaching, habitat loss, human-elephant conflict, and mistreatment in captivity.

“Every year we will mark this day and organize some activities to call on people to protect elephants and their habitat,” Mu Yian Yu said at the ceremony.

A Sayaboury resident who attended the event said he believes the Chinese are building the center in order to protect elephants in Laos and not to export them back home.

“The Chinese are doing business in our country,” said the Sayaboury resident who declined to be named. “Their purpose is to convince people to protect the elephants. These are all Lao elephants. I believe they will not sell these animals to China. They have a conservation center that can train them.”

Officials of Sayaboury province and the Chinese company estimate that there are about 850 elephants in Laos, half of which are domesticated elephants. In Sayaboury province alone, there are 250 domesticated elephants and 150 wild ones.

Not to everyone’s liking

Not everyone is a fan of wildlife conservations centers like the one the Chinese will build in Laos.

Edwin Wiek, founder of Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, told RFA’s Lao Service that wildlife conservation efforts need to be backed by law enforcement to be effective at increasing animal populations.

“I never agree with the breeding programs for domestic elephants,” he said. “For instance, in Thailand … the population of elephants always increases because of real conservation [efforts] and enforcement of the law.”

Though Laos does have such a law, poachers continue to kill elephants for their tusks and hides, which they sell illegally, mainly to China.

“We have the law, but we do not implement it,” he said “It is not because of the law but the problem is that it is not enforced.”

“Lao is now considered a global market for wildlife,” he said, adding that the trafficking of wildlife has been increasing in the country.

Wiek said if there is no further deforestation and elephant hunting in Southeast Asia, future elephant populations might increase because of areas along the Thailand-Myanmar border where elephants can roam freely and breed naturally.

“To talk about elephant conservation, we must make laws to protect against deforestation and the illegal ivory trade,” he said.

Furthermore, Wiek questioned the motives behind centers that breed elephants in captivity.

“In fact someone may think that breeding elephants to have many calves is called conservation. That does not increase the number of elephants in the forest, but rather it is only breeding for business.”

Laos became a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a multilateral treaty protecting endangered plants and animals, in May 2004. The convention banned the ivory trade in 1989.

Though deforestation, particularly from illegal logging, is the main reason for the declining elephant population in Laos, pachyderms are also hunted and killed by poachers who smuggle their ivory tusks and hides outside the country.

Lao officials are known for the lax implementation and enforcement of laws prohibiting illegal logging and the smuggling of illegal wildlife, and border officials can easily be bribed to look the other way, experts say.

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Banna the elephant recovers from heatstroke

Banna the elephant, a star attraction at the Shanghai Zoo, suffered from heatstroke on Monday following a month of 35 C days in the city. However, the animal has been receiving medication and is improving, the zoo said on Thursday.

The 53-year-old Asian elephant, which has been at the zoo longer than any of the other 7,000 animals there, was found on Monday afternoon lying on one side on the ground.

"The elephant had been standing since she gave birth to her first calf in 1978," said He Weiguang, a spokesman for the Shanghai Zoo.

"A calf usually sleeps under the mother's stomach, and the elephant has an extraordinarily strong mothering instinct and doesn't want to hurt the calf, so since then she has maintained the habit of standing all the time," he said.

She is eating more these days and can stand by herself, according to the zoo.

Initial tests found that Banna had a temperature of 38 C, up from the normal 36 C. All other indicators were normal.

The elephant was immediately given medical treatment, including intramuscular and intravenous injections. Its body temperature dropped to 37.1 C the next morning.

A doctor from the infectious disease department of Fudan University's Zhongshan Hospital and animal experts from Shanghai Wild Animal Park and Beijing Zoo were convened for a consultation on Tuesday morning and agreed that it was important for the elephant to stand as soon as possible.

"We feared that its colossal body would put huge pressure on its heart, lungs and gastrointestinal tract if it kept lying there," said Gui Jianfeng, director of the Shanghai Zoo's animal hospital.

At noon on Tuesday, Banna finally stood up with the help of a heavy-duty crane. She still has a bit of a fever but her appetite has almost recovered, He said.

Xu Jianhua, a feeder at the zoo, said the elephants stay indoors on summer days and are taken outdoors for a walk after sunset.

"They are also given spray showers from time to time to cool off on scorching days," he said.

Spray showers are also available to monkeys, tigers and chimpanzees, He said, adding that tigers and bears spend a lot of time in the water cooling off.

Pandas are the only animals at the zoo that get air-conditioned rooms.

Most animals are also provided with watermelons, cucumbers and tomatoes on a daily basis.

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