Stop littering at the zoo, it can kill animals

By Jim Plouffe

JAKARTA (JP): The Komodo dragon lay motionless, which isn't unusual. However, early in January last year, the native lizard hadn't moved for days. When the zoo keepers went to investigate, they found stones littered around the large reptile's body. Their immediate conclusion was it had been stoned to death by "impatient visitors, in an attempt to wake what they thought was a sleeping Komodo," The Jakarta Post reported at the time.

It was later discovered that the komodo had first died of an illness and only then had "impatient" visitors thrown the rocks.

Seeing animals being pelted with stones is common at the Ragunan Zoo in southern Jakarta, where the behavior of the majority of visitors can only be described as shocking.

The management of the zoo, a department of the city administration, and a group of loyal volunteers called Sahabat Satwa -- Friends of the Zoo -- are striving to educate visitors in order to limit the occurrence of abuse. They have an awesome task ahead of them, from anti-litter campaigns to talks on animal behavior. But who really cares? In a city where many people don't live as well as the zoo's animals, aren't a few dead or sick animals nothing to worry about?

After a spate of killings, both at the zoo and in the city last year, the Post answered this question in an editorial called Of Animal and Man on Jan. 8, 1994. It explained that concern and sorrow should be shown for the animals not "because the victimized animals were very close to many of us, or that they were so innocent and defenseless, but because in discussing such cruelty, we must talk about ourselves." Indeed. How we treat animals is directly linked to the way we treat one another, and, as the editorial added, tormenting or killing an animal doesn't "bode well for the image of man, or for the image of our society in the eyes of the world."

So far, throwing a stone at a snake, feeding an elephant a handful of peanuts and leaving behind a mound of garbage after a picnic, have been dismissed as a part of Indonesian culture. However, as head of the Flora and Fauna Department, Dr. Sutarman, points out that a sign reading, "'don't feed the animals' doesn't link with (Indonesian) culture," only because of "the low education of the visitors."

Islam teaches compassion toward the environment and tells its followers to be kind toward animals. There are many hadith -- sayings, traditions and examples of conduct by Prophet Muhammad -- which give clear directives as to how humans should treat animals. One states that, "Allah has ordered everybody to be kind to all things. Sharpen your knife when you wish to kill or slaughter an animal so it won't suffer."

Anything but a sharp knife was used to kill the cassowary, a large flightless bird native to Irian Jaya and Australia, recently.

The cassowary hadn't eaten for three days, Dr. Sutarman explained, so a zoo veterinarian gave it an injection and put it under observation. After not eating for another three days, it died. An autopsy showed the bird had died of eating a bit of plastic thrown into its pen by a thoughtless visitor. The plastic then plugged the entrance to its intestine, stopping waste from being ejected from its body and slowly poisoning the bird. In effect, a small piece of plastic caused the bird to starve to death.

Litter outside and inside the animal pens, and the poor hygienic conditions it causes, is a major health risk to the 4,000 mammals, reptiles and birds kept at the zoo. According to the head of the works department, 40 percent of the 10-square- meters of garbage strewn across the park on any given Sunday is non-biodegradable plastics. Drink cans make up 30 percent of the total, and paper, mainly newspaper that visitors sit on during picnics in the otherwise natural surrounds, contributes 20 percent to the total. The remaining 10 percent is biodegradable waste which is used in the zoo's compost project.

The 50 cleaning staff labor from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. to keep up with the littering guests. "Monday to Friday the zoo is very clean, but on the weekends the staff can't cope," explains the zealous president of Friends of the Zoo, Carmel Webster.

To help alleviate the problem, the zoo has provided sets of trash cans throughout the 135 hectare park, Webster pointed out. The sets are comprised of two cans, a green one for organic waste and a red one for cans, plastic and other non-biodegradable waste. Children of zoo employees then sell the recyclable items to supplement their families' meager incomes, according to the head of the works department. The problem, states Webster, is that visitors don't throw their garbage in the bins.

Campaign

A campaign to educate visitors about the danger litter poses to zoo animals has been launched by both the zoo's administration and Friends of the Zoo. Besides the rubbish bins, Friends of the Zoo have concentrated on educating visitors through brochures they provide at the information office. On the back of one map of the zoo they have produced a bilingual list of things that should not be done, including littering and spitting. It points out that plastic can harm the animals and that "Spitting spreads germs," and "Many germs in human mouths do not make us sick but can be fatal to animals."

The message has obviously not reached everyone. During a Friends of the Zoo workshop on reptiles by Ron Lilley of the World Wide Fund for Nature, a young local man got up from enjoying a demonstration of an Indian python eating a chicken, sauntered a few paces down one of four reptile enclosures and spat on the red-tile floor.

Realizing that maybe this young man and many other visitors cannot read or can't be bothered to, Friends of the Zoo have begun incorporating drawings of unhappy animals surrounded by garbage in their brochures and educational books. In a recently released picture book on the zoo, called Kebon Binatang Ragunan, Friends of the Zoo have added illustrations of animals suffering from abuse and litter. They hope this will help get the message across that animals are suffering from the behavior of visitors. One drawing depicts animals laughing at and taunting a naked human family in a cage. It asks, in effect, "how would you feel?"

The zoo's management has also started using this technique on signs around the 131-year-old zoo. But, according to Dr. Sutarman, people steal the attractive signs -- instead of just vandalizing them as they did the written warnings.

Webster suggests having reminders blared over the PA system every 10 minutes, but Dr. Sutarman's ultimate answer to the problem of people littering, as well as pestering and feeding the animals, is to call in the army. He says that the zoo's 37 security guards are far from adequate and that the army's canine unit would do the trick, especially during holidays when the zoo is inundated by an average of 100,000 visitors. The sheer number of visitors also poses other dangers to the animals, especially over feeding.

If each of the 30,000 visitors on a normal Sunday feed one animal just one peanut, that would be 30,000 peanuts in a day -- enough to make even an elephant incredibly sick. Put the two-and- a-half million visitors a year into the equation, and the picture is grim.

"Too many (animals) have died by visitors," Dr. Sutarman states glumly, adding that it is not intentional. He explained that 45 percent of the primates have chronic diarrhea after every holiday because visitors feed them.

In 1983, Dr. Sutarman related, a very rare pygmy Siamang from Mantawi, West Sumatra died from obesity because visitors constantly fed the friendly monkey peanuts until it became so fat that its heart couldn't stand the strain. It died of a heart attack.

Webster told of finding a chimpanzee with drink cans lined up in its enclosure. She couldn't be certain if the cans, including a beer can, were empty when given to the chimp, but the simple act of giving them to the animal for entertainment illustrates a complete disregard for the animal's well-being.

Dr. Sutarman is quick to point out that it isn't cruelty that drives visitors to feed the animals, but ignorance. Unfortunately, the gap between the two is narrow at the zoo. Ignorance can be combated with education, but cruelty has no cure.

The difference between cruelty and ignorance becomes indistinguishable when watching a guest lean over the rail of a primate's cage and torment a monkey until it goes berserk. It happens everyday. Orangutans are given lit cigarettes, stones are thrown at everything from turtles to giraffes, crocodiles have garbage poured on their backs and firecrackers are tossed into bird enclosures. The list includes every type of cruelty imaginable, including zoo keepers killing the animals to get back at zoo management, the Post reported last year.

"Nocturnal animals get the worst (of the physical abuse)," according to Dr. Sutarman, because visitors want to see them in action, not curled up in the corner asleep. A well aimed stone usually does the trick. The primates suffer the most from non- physical abuse, such as tormenting, because visitors find it fun to see the apes and monkeys react "in human ways," Dr. Sutarman says.

One chimpanzee reacts just this way. After years of torment and having everything from food, garbage and stones thrown at him, the chimpanzee has taken to hurling stones back. A classic example of learned behavior, which, ironically, may also be the way to stop the abuse.

Dr. Sutarman's solution is, once again, education. It must "start in kindergarten" and in the home, he insists. "If a family loves animals, the kids will." He also believes that a love of animals is a secondary effect of wealth. With wealth comes education as well as the time and will to be considerate to animals.

The zoo's management is limited in what it can do by a lack of funds. Besides a barrage of ineffectual signs and a school lecture series, the education aspect of the zoo is neglected.

This is where Friends of the Zoo come in. According to Webster, they "do the small stuff" like helping out at the nursery. But the group's main focus, and arguably the most important, is to educate the public towards greater understanding of the purposes and functions of zoos. They do this by running a wide range of activities and publishing educational booklets, which they fund by giving educational tours around the zoo to both adults and children. Besides direct education through children's workshops and talks at woman's groups, Friends of the Zoo indirectly teach visitors and staff about the need to care for animals by funding animal welfare programs, like their highly successful mealworm feeding program. When a visitor sees a happy animal in a proper enclosure, and is also told something about the animal, the visitor is less likely to hurt the animal.

Unfortunately, like many of Jakarta's problems, nothing will change soon. Dr. Sutarman stresses that any change needs "action from the top". Luckily, action is forth coming from patron of the zoo and Jakarta Governor, Surjadi Soedirdja.

At least a generation will pass, however, before the crocodile lying in a murky pond with stones and garbage littered across his back will once again cry only crocodile tears.