SEPTEMBER 23 — It's been a crazy few days. We find out that China is extorting us by using panda cubs, northern states are culling dogs for fear of rabies and in the meantime our tigers, rhinos, turtles and tapirs are still endangered.
Let's start with the pandas. China charges US$600,000 (RM2.5 million) for each panda cub we produce. We don't even get to keep it ― once it pops out, it's deemed property of the Chinese government, which it can and will retrieve in time.
It costs roughly RM60,000 a month for our current panda upkeep and if you've ever visited the panda pavilion, you'll see that it's mighty impressive. Temperate, airconditioned, a large glass enclosure and an all-round comfortable experience for our tubby guests. What's not so impressive? How squalid the rest of the zoo is in comparison.
Zoo Negara looks rundown, some of the habitats are cramped and not well-maintained and while the animals look healthy enough, their quarters are just barely adequate.
The reality is that while the pandas are a popular exhibit, the costs incurred to keep them happy and healthy (to avoid China's wrath) are highly unlikely to be recouped by visitor numbers. Why then are we stuck with the cute, but useless things? Apparently it's a thing called diplomacy. We let China charge us too much for pandas and we hope that leads to trade deals and those happy spenders called Chinese tourists.
In the meantime, Penang's chief minister is being called a monster for allowing the cull of stray dogs after a few strays who had bitten humans were found to have rabies.
If this was any other country, I would certainly back the call to neuter and vaccinate instead of straight out cull. The political ramifications, however, cannot be ignored. This is not a dog-loving country and if Lim Guan Eng tried to save the dogs, he would have been accused of putting the welfare of dogs first, over his constituents'.
Already some activists are declaring they wouldn't vote for Lim because of the culling. Do they seriously think a Barisan Nasional rep would have done differently? That's highly improbable.
There's also the fact that there are currently insufficient supplies of rabies vaccines. Because we had been rabies-free for so long, there wasn't much of a supply for dogs or humans. Apparently there is effort being made to up the stocks but that will take time and rabies vaccines are not so quickly procured.
I'm not a fan of DAP nor all that much a supporter of Lim, but I don't see how he could have made any other choice. Sit on his heels, tell people to stay in their houses and try not to get bitten because the vaccines won't arrive for at least a few weeks? The dogs don't deserve to die, but at the same time, stray dog populations are a problem.
Stray dogs are (for the most part) the product of our own careless abandonment or wanton approach to breeding, letting animals breed freely and resulting in so many animals without homes. Left unchecked, strays can pose a danger as they can and will attack humans as well as other dogs.
If innocent stray dogs die because we can't coexist with them, whose fault is it really? Ours. Yet we can't blame councils whose resources are already stretched when they prefer to cull instead of neuter. This will unfortunately be left to private citizens to try and right the wrongs, to try and give them homes or at least stop them from multiplying.
Yet forgive me if I sound callous but stray dogs are resilient and if 10 dogs get culled, they will soon be replaced by another litter. There are animals that are not so fortunate, that probably need more help than the mongrel down the street.
I'm talking about our wildlife. Our real, native animals. Our tigers. Our rhinos. Our turtles and orangutans. Poachers are still making too much money killing them and our own citizens are callous about protecting these animals that once gone, will not return.
It still makes me angry remembering when I tried telling off a group of Malaysians for eating turtle eggs, but their answer was merely: “Tapi sedap!” (But they're delicious!)
We do keep getting our priorities wrong, don't we? I grieve because I get the feeling someday the only tigers left would be the ones we see in our coat of arms and the last ones that aren't being sold to some quack doctor in China (oh, the irony) will probably spend their miserable old age in the truly terrible Zoo Negara.
China, you can keep your damn pandas.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
