1. ZOO: 1 line, 35 counts

1. ZOO: 1 line, 35 counts Perancak Zoo, Bali's ugly little secret

There is an ugly little secret in a beautiful corner of Bali.

An adorable baby lion cub, emaciated and covered in sores, is chained by the neck inside a tiny, stinking cage.

Not far away his parents, both proud African lions, lie on the filthy concrete floor of another cage, chained by their necks to posts.

The baby's father has an open wound on his head and growls angrily at anyone who approaches his cage. The lioness is not allowed to see her baby, who spends all his time alone in his dark little cell.

This is Perancak Tourist Park, a private zoo which animal rights activists say must be closed immediately.

A recent report by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) declared Perancak Tourist Park the worst of 10 Indonesian zoos visited by investigators over the past two years.

Perancak was "beyond rehabilitation and should be closed as soon as possible", the WSPA report said.

Animals were kept in pitifully small cages, hygiene was completely neglected and the animals showed symptoms of severe mental disturbance, the investigators found.

The zoo managers even offered to sell one of the seven African lions then in residence to investigators. "Several of the lions were chained by the neck and others had open sores which had been left untreated and were infested with maggots," the report said.

The zoo did not have a valid permit, but kept several types of protected species, including eagles, hornbills and crocodiles.

When The Jakarta Post visited Perancak this month, things had not improved. The eagles are no longer there, and five of the seven lions have been transferred to Surabaya Zoo by the Forestry Department.

A skinny, nervy pig-tailed macaque runs loose around the park. Around its belly is a broken chain. In a corner of the zoo is the answer to its escape -- the wire surrounding its empty cage is torn open and the other end of the macaque's broken chain lies on the floor.

Now it runs wild, climbing on the cages of other animals and sidling up to visitors in the hope of being fed. It is in luck -- a man is holding a packet of crisps. Within seconds the macaque snatches them and scampers into a tree with its prize.

The macaque seems at first to have little fear of humans -- but when one visitor bends to pick up a stick it squeals in terror and sprints out of reach. Clearly this creature has learned from experience to fear humans wielding sticks.

Activist Purwo Kuncoro, from the Bali division of Animal Conservation for Life or Konservasi Satwa Bagi Kehidupan (KSBK), is horrified by Perancak.

"The conditions here are terrible," Purwo says. "Many of these animals cannot be saved. They have been so badly neglected that many of them would have to be euthanized."

Purwo and fellow activist Wita Wahyudi have visited Perancak dozens of times in their research for the report, which was a joint project by WSPA and KSBK.

They have learned the owner of Perancak Tourist Park, about two hours' drive east from Denpasar, is local businessman Murah Hardono. But the family who ostensibly runs the zoo, selling tickets and snacks and feeding the animals, say they have no telephone number or address for him.

Officials of the Department of Forestry say they, too, have been unable to trace Murah.

"The biggest problem in Indonesia is a lack of education about animal cruelty," Wita says. "We have never educated our children to care for animals. Even in kindergarten, children learn that if they want to see a bird, they should put it in a tiny cage."

At Perancak, Purwo crouches before the dank cage of a wild boar. The animal, its ribs clearly visible through its skin, wallows in a thick gray puddle of mud which takes up half its cage.

"We don't want all zoos to be closed down," Purwo says. "We realize that zoos are necessary for education and for breeding some species, but they do not have to be like this."

Next door to the wild boar's cage is a cassowary. This enormous bird, perhaps 1.7 meters tall, is kept in a cage no bigger than three meters square. It darts about nervously, banging itself against the walls.

Four peacocks stand in a large, bare aviary and in a malodorous pond behind a wooden fence, several large crocodiles lurk in a dark-green pond. Near the crocodiles lie the remains of their food. The bloody mess of flesh looks like it might have been a dog.

Perhaps the saddest sight at Perancak is the cage which once housed an animal that has disappeared to who knows where.

At one end of the row of cages a glass-walled room sits empty, its roof missing. This room is tiny -- surely not more than four meters square. What sort of animal could be kept in such a tiny place? Surely something which did not need much room to move.

A tumbled-down sign reads: "Kangaroo".

For a kangaroo, the famous high-jumping, athletic Australian marsupial, being trapped in a room like this must have been torture.

Where has it gone? Nobody at Perancak can say -- but whatever fate befell the Perancak kangaroo could not have been worse than a life in this place.

2. COMMENT: 1 line, 40 counts 'Krismon' leaves Medan Zoo in sorry state

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) recently reported that Indonesian zoos are in a sorry state with the animals' welfare being largely neglected. The prolonged economic crisis (Krismon) has been blamed for the predicament.

Anhar Lubis of the Medan Zoo and Joko Nur Prihadianto of Yogyakarta's Gembira Loka zoo share their stories with the Post.

Anhar Lubis, manager of Medan Zoo, North Sumatra.

The Medan zoo is currently in sorry condition.

The zoo only covers around three-hectares of land, in contrast to the ideal 20-hectares as required by the Indonesian laws on zoo.

With such a limited plot, the area should have been established to lodge certain animals only, like for birds but not for a zoo that houses various species of animals.

The zoo is now home to a total of 288 animals of different species, including 22 species of mammal, 28 species of bird, 5 species of reptile and 20 species of fish.

Since the economic crisis hit the country in 1997, the zoo's management have never reduced the quantity of food for each animal. We have to spend around Rp 1.1 million to feed them everyday.

We limit food for average zoo animals because they are not for breeding and so far we have several new members of wild mammals, namely tigers and orangutans.

We are doing our best to provide sufficient food for the animals and we are also looking for donors to help us build better cages for the animals as some of both the open and closed cages that we have here are in deteriorating conditions.

I personally think that it is better that Medan Zoo be moved to another location, ideally one that is larger, equipped with better cages and away from the heart of the city. This way we can expect more visitors and generate more income to improve the animal's condition.

Joko Nur Prihadianto, Public Relation Manager of Gembira Loka Botanical Garden and Zoo, Yogyakarta.

We basically accept all the suggestion that the study has recommended us to do. We consider it as input for a better condition. We will do our best for the wealth of all the animals here. We try to do our best to provide them with environment and treatment that best suit their real habitat in the nature. This is our basic principle in treating them in the zoo.

There are of course several things in the report that we do not fully agree on. For example regarding the way it described stressed animals. It, for instance, considered that stressed elephants would keep moving their trunks. In fact, they do so not only when they are stressed, but also when they are hungry.

They do so to remove dirt from their trunks and food.

We are currently in the process of establishing a caging system that best suits the animals' need, that best resemble their true habitat. But, of course, we cannot do so all at once. We have to do so step by step, especially due to the limited fund we have.

In 2001 we had a total income of some US$100,000 according to the evaluation conducted by the Ethics and Welfare Committee of the South East Asia Zoos Association (SEAZA). But we have raised the entrance ticket from Rp 4,000 to Rp 5,000 since April this year.

This means that our income will hopefully rise up to some 25 percent as well, giving us more space to provide the animal with much better treatment.

Gembira Loka occupies an area of some 14 hectare of land, five hectare of which are allocated for a botanical garden. It serves as the lung of the city with hundreds of forest plants including the rare ones. The zoo accommodates some 1,000 animals of some 265 species.

We spent some Rp 64 million a month for taking care of all the animals. This excludes the fund allocated for the cage rehabilitation program.

3. WATER: 3 lines, 20 counts Dwindling clean water supplies will be world's biggest future challenge

A lack of clean water will be the biggest issue facing the world in the next 50 years and governments and business are failing to face up to the challenge, a senior Australian researcher said.

Graham Harris of the state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) told a recent environment conference in Melbourne that business needed to understand its dependence on the environment and create a new economic framework that focused on longer-term returns.

"Even if human populations were to level off in the next 50 years, we will require double the present supply of energy, materials and water. Water is the big issue for the next 50 years," Harris said.

"The vast majority of the world's people already have only limited access to clean water, basic shelter and adequate food, and the situation is not going to get any better. Without water, food, shelter and compassion, we are all lost."

Harris told delegates at the ENVIRO 2002 conference that the Australian government's actions, for instance, "fail to reflect the urgency... We talk too much and act too slowly".

The conference followed another event in Melbourne that focused on the impact cities have on the ecosystem with more than 50 percent of the world's population living in urban areas.

At the end of that earlier meeting, around 40 environmental experts from around the world called on governments to control urban water use as a key part of creating "sustainable cities".

"A lot of people think 'if I've got lots of green parks and gardens, that's fantastic'," said Harry Blutstein, director of sustainable development for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) of the Australian state of Victoria.

"But hang on. They're using enormous amounts of water, often not recycled water. Perhaps an Australian city has to look a bit browner during its summer."

Convened by EPA Victoria for the U.N. Environment Programme, its findings will contribute to a World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this year.

For cities to become sustainable, they had to be treated as ecosystems, the experts said.

This required much more recycling and reuse of water rather than simply spending large sums on dams.

It also meant new housing developments should incorporate stormwater tanks, so that city people would drink their own roofwater, as occurs in the Australian bush, Blutstein said.

The inefficient design of high-rise buildings, which failed to take into account the environment, was also costly.

Studies showed that the productivity of people could be increased by 15 percent or more by providing natural light, natural ventilation and other inputs from nature.

Malaysian architect Ken Yeang, for instance, was building high rises with windows that open and with gardens throughout the structure to filter the air.

"We're used to having a totally sterile environment in which the temperature doesn't vary within a degree. There's no breezes. This is not a natural environment," Blutstein said.