Stop littering at the zoo, it can kill animals

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.