September 13, 2004

• " Sure, he threatened the children with bricks, but he also was cute, people said." Hahahahaa.. oh man, that's funny.
• "It only takes one monkey...The rumors spread from one house to another, and soon there's a panic." brilliant
• No. Pitiful. All too often, when wild animals and people collide, the animals lose. Animals don't usually have the right to a trial or a hearing. In India, people live in the protected forestkands and wildlife preserves -- animals have less and less room to exist in where they don't interface with people. These ten monkeys are being held in a relatively small building, without much stimulation or room to exercise. Two of the monkey inmates are there, it would seem, merely for 'loitering'. Surely India can do better than this.
• bees - I understand your frustration. But at the same time, I can't help but think about the history of protected forests and wildlife preserves. In the third world, these were often created by colonial governments without little or no regard to the people who were living in the places at the time. In many places in eastern Africa, game preserves for colonial hunting were created out of traditional grazing grounds, leaving local farmers strapped for land - and then converted into preservations later. Now post-colonial governments are under international pressure to keep these areas "pristine" (even if they never were historically) - but it's the local people who do the sacraficing to preserve our world heritage. There's just so many complicated factors - growing population, lack of land, or sometimes lack of access to land (as in Zimbabwe), poverty, international interests both for conservation, and for exploitation - there aren't any easy answers. But on the bright side, I did meet someone last year from India who is in the forestry school here - he studies "community forestry" - that is, trying to manage forests for the betterment of forests, animals and local people. So they are trying to make things better.