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Post by panzerman on Oct 20, 2011 16:39:17 GMT -8
Storyline goes like this....
Some nutbar that owned a "Wildlife Park" in Zanesville, Ohio, commits suicide after releasing all of his exotic animals,56 mammals, including 18 endangered Bengal Tigers. The County Sherriffs good boys then decided to have a "shoot too kill" hunt.
My question would be this, why would they not have used tranquilizer darts instead? Secondly, the USFW people seem to be so worried about enforcement on insect collectors, why were they not concerned over the slaughter of 18 Tigers? I remember, many people were upset about a mounted Bengal Tiger that was put up in the Paris Auction.
John
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Post by saturniidave on Oct 20, 2011 18:36:12 GMT -8
Apparently they tried to tranquilise one and it "went mad" so they just decided to shoot them all in case any came anywhere near the good folks of Ohio. I did read that at least some were saved but also he had been prosecuted more than once for not keeping them in humane conditions. Either way it is a sad state of affairs to have to shoot endangered species, ans I would not mind betting they enjoyed doing it too.  |
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 21, 2011 4:56:47 GMT -8
Very sad. I think there is exactly that desire to tell your buddies over a beer that you shot a tiger. Bunch of crap in my opinion- there are so many cooky watch-dog type groups with trained biologists that are able to dart and trap a completely wild tiger in the jungles of India for study that I can't believe someone wouldn't have volunteered time and money to save these poor animals that are now the victim of cruelty from both their jackass idiot owner but also the red-neck morons that call themselves law enforcement in Zanesville. That number of tigers is about 3% of the world's total number of wild bengals. Contribute to another bottle neck like the one that will probably be the demise of Cheetahs. A real tragedy that anyone is ever even allowed to have them in such an irresponsible setting and that the responsibility for the fate of these unfortunate creatures ultimately falls in the hands of a bunch of trigger happy morons. The good folks of Ohio were on lock-down so tell me who is saving what now? Bigger question is how in the hell someone like that could have such animals and why, if it was a known problem to the law enforce there already, nothing was done about it before this happened?
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Post by wingedwishes on Oct 21, 2011 13:54:12 GMT -8
Having experience in this I have to chime in. If you dart a large animal it takes several minutes for the animal to be immobilized. This is plenty of time for it to find a hiding spot in the forest to sleep it off. I've tried to find an aggressive Rottweiler dog after darting it. It was able to hide in the forest where we could not find it. A trap will work IF the animal will go into it. Many animals end up associating human smell with fear and will never go near a manmade or man touched object. Enforcement of exotics is difficult to do. There are very few agents to work those cases and it is often the Federal or sometimes the state which has to investigate. Local enforcement does not (for the most part) have any code or law to address this because the state or feds are called in to take care of it. In Florida, state wildlife officer generally have no back up and have 4 or more COUNTIES to patrol alone. Do you know what these law enforcement wildlife armed cops are paid? LESS than $40,000 a year the last time I checked. An aside: The Viet Nam vet had just been released from jail on firearm charges.
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Post by panzerman on Oct 21, 2011 18:44:07 GMT -8
Fact is that the folks in Zanesville were probably much safer to have wondered about with these big cats at large, then lets say they were on a tour bus that broke down in the middle of the night in a bad Detroit, LA neigherhood....
Lets face these facts, how often do we hear of Jaguars attacking tourists in Costa-Rica? Most wild animals want to stay far away from human contact.
John
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Post by wingedwishes on Oct 22, 2011 1:07:55 GMT -8
These were long term captives though which were probably not afraid of people and were used to human contact. Fear plus familiarity....examples would be of "pet" chimps ripping up people where wild chimps are not so much a threat.
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Post by anthony on Oct 22, 2011 7:56:24 GMT -8
They did save 6 animals, a black panther a leopard but I think no tigers.
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Post by saturniidave on Oct 22, 2011 9:46:01 GMT -8
I read in the papers today that he did not die immediately, apparently one of his Tigers finished him off. Poetic justice I say.
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Post by wingedwishes on Oct 22, 2011 17:32:47 GMT -8
There's no question in my mind that the guy had bubbles in his think tank. Those kinds of animals are a huge responsibility who need care/maintenance constantly.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 24, 2011 6:27:10 GMT -8
Yes, the worst part of the whole story is that these animals were even allowed to be put in this position. Someone as crazy and irresponsible as that should not have access to such animals at all, let alone own a menagerie of them with such terrible care. He was clearly not a fit owner so why any of those multitudes of laws that we as insect collectors bump into don't have any bearing on his possession of these animals I will never understand. I guess tigers don't destroy citrus crops so who cares. But you would think that most of those animals are CITES, so where the heck were those guys? Too busy looking through a box of five dried, dead A. vanillae to notice Noah's Ark going to hell in a hand basket down the road?
I don't think that Law Enforcement were the correct people to handle it though, that's what I am arguing. There are plenty of other groups that tag and track mountain lions, grizzlies, even little snakes and other more discreet animals. Law enforcement should stick to human criminals and possibly direct protection of the public. If you have a wild tiger on the loose, then someone who is experienced with tigers should be called in. I realize that tranqs aren't super fast but in the case of animals this rare, unlike someone's aggressive out of control dog, they are worth tagging which can be done simultaneously. The common dog is crazy most likely because of bad care, the highly endangered tiger is crazy because, well, it's a tiger. Wrong approach and wrong people to handle this situation just made everything worse. You wouldn't call in a baker to fix your plumbing, you know what I mean? Once law enforcement becomes involved the animals were doomed before the first one was even spotted. Law enforcement should've been called to deal with the human end of it, but it seems they failed on both counts.
You would think that USFWS should've been involved with the animals long ago. I guess a butterfly is very dangerous while a lion is not.
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Post by wingedwishes on Oct 24, 2011 13:22:06 GMT -8
You are right Starlight. Law enforcement is not the best agency to handle this. I suspect they were the only agency available though. State wildlife usually has a 24 hour lag time and even if all of their officers showed, it would not be enough. USFWS would take even longer to mobilize. A rescue? Maybe but they don't have the resources for aquiring a loose population. Even the celebrity Jack Hanna stated something to the effect that law enforcement did the right thing. Jack being the director emeritus of the Cleveland zoo. The Ark was already sunk months ago when the situation was not handled in the beginning. Government - being reactive - may pass some state laws where there are none for having such poor pets. The monkeys, lemurs, feral dogs, and even a Rhea, were all able to escape once I darted them.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 26, 2011 5:44:13 GMT -8
I know, it is terrible. Probably the agency closest at hand. There are biologists all over the country and probably willing people in other parts of the world that could be there at the drop of a hat if they had any hope of recovering and re-homing these animals to somewhere more suitable, somewhere their genes wouldn't just be completely lost, I suspect that they were not even a thought though. I think the main issue is that using radio tags, not unlike what is done for Sharks or other elusive species, is the expense. However it seems to me that if the government is going to permit these animals to enter the country at all then we are accepting stewardship of said animals because of the nature of their tenuous ecological position. It stands to reason that any animal you bring into the country may and probably will at least in a few cases escape by virtue of human error. Either paying the money upfront to pre-tag these animals (frankly I think they all should be tagged for this reason- don't you want to know where every single man-eating exotic beast is? You don't like the "big brother" sense of that, then easily avoided by not buying lions and tigers and bears) or paying it later when you have to round them all up because some psychotic maniac does something like this recent guy, or the stupid chimp woman and so on should be obligate. Instead we take even the cheaper route and just shoot them all. Well it's much cheaper to kill all the wild ones too than it is to spend money on their conservation, why is different suddenly when it's at home? Either accept that you are dealing with rare and wild animals and treat them as such or be willing to go to great lengths to recover them. It's not impractical to do it, it's just expensive. These animals can be darted and radio labeled with the very same shot, for a not-so-small cost of equipment and personnel. But it's case by case- animals like this warrant special efforts.
You are exactly right, government is responsive and not pro-active at all (look at healthcare for a perfect example of why paying less up front is better than waiting for a crisis down the road and yet we still don't do it) so I do fully expect a bunch of ridiculously framed laws to appear that makes it harder for wildlife refuges to care for their animals and easier for canned hunters to bring more of these unfortunate animals into the country by paying for a new and more expensive permit. Or some kind of laughable regulations to that effect.
Well at least I rest assured that it will be just as hard to get a tiger now as it is to get a butterfly pupae from the neighboring state, lol.
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 26, 2011 12:14:19 GMT -8
It's pretty easy to armchair quarterback events like this.
All I can say is that if I had a Bengal tiger in my backyard, I'd shoot first and ask questions later. Better that than have to find out ten minutes later that it grabbed a little kid while we were all sitting on our tootsies waiting for somebody to show up and shoot it with a dart.
LE certainly wasn't the optimum force to handle it. But last I knew there aren't a bunch of expert animal darters sitting in Ohio waiting for something like this. Yeah, so if you have a tiger on the loose you wait for the right guy to show up with his tranq gun. And then tell him, oh, by the way, there are 18 of these things around, you have to get them too. Uh huh.
And as far as experts worldwide being there at the drop of a hat- really? Where are we dropping the hat from, Uranus? Really, how long would it take to get a team together? Try days, more likely weeks. All the while there's how many big, hungry cats roaming around the 'hood.
Seriously folks, what else could have been done? It was a sad end, but the most realitic as well.
As far as the "let's add more controls" bandwagon, which everyone loves to jump on every time there's an anomoly, better to work from fact rather than heart. There are thousands of tigers held in private captivity in USA. One incident, thousands of tiger owners. Is it really a problem? No, it was an anomoly.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 27, 2011 6:06:02 GMT -8
What is anomalous is the personal, private ownership if such animals. I beg to differ, most people do not own tigers. Most people own dogs and cats, maybe a parakeet or a goldfish (and here probably an insect or two). Yes there are tigers at lots of zoos, but in a facility you just erected in your backyard? No. So working from fact- the greater majority of the folks in the US do not have household class III wildlife nor do even the majority of small scale private zoos. The ratio of tiger to human, unlike cats or dogs, is very small. Most are housed in state, often federally, approved installations. Is it a problem that states don't have laws preventing known trouble people from getting tigers? Yes. Is it an anomaly? Yes. Most states do restrict this and even in states where it is unrestricted most people forgo the lion cub at the pet store for obvious reasons. Ohio is an anomaly, only one of a few states that permit this and they are the states these kinds of things happen in. Before you try to say that tigers are this ubiquitous in the US, remember that most of the tigers around are on the federal radar and are housed in accredited facilities that are inspected at regular intervals. The number of tigers in someone's backyard is extremely small. Attacks from tigers in this country are almost exclusively reserved for people with "pet" tigers at "rescue" centers in their backyards, not people who work at zoos where the overwhelming majority of the US' tigers are housed. Those animals are well contained and the people who work with them are quite aware of how un-pet-like tigers et al can be.
And could they be found? Clearly they could because within the day most of the animals were dead. It's the most realistic end because it is the cheap and easy and worse, fun for LE to shoot something otherwise unattainable.
Since most of the animals were already dead before sundown, who would even have a chance to consider whether it was a viable option? It was a free for all open hunting season, it's the approach that is disgusting. If it even seemed like there was some thought given to the plan and that other options were considered then it would be much more palatable. It's the LE officers interviews, the time frame and heaps of dead CITES animals that makes the story aggravating. Pretty obvious this was a freebie for a canned hunt, not that it had anything to do with protecting the people of the city (else those animals would've been gone long ago given the documented history of the nut job that owned them from that very local law enforcement agency that ultimately killed the escapees). See the difference?
So seriously folks, is it that strange that someone who is already a law enforcement nightmare, who is clearly not responsible as documented by history and who owns tigers would ultimately become a public safety concern? Speaking from fact not the heart, this is not the only incident of this nature. If you just google US tiger attacks, you will find scant accidents at actual zoos where public entry is permitted in stark contrast to the multitudes that happen at private ranches or so-called "wild-life sanctuaries." I'd like to see educated, intelligent owners. Not people who think their tiger "loves them" or is "pet" because it was raised from a cub. That is the reality. Just because we like to import exotics doesn't mean that everyone can or should own them. Just as you purport shooting the tigers for public safety, so should you jump on that bandwagon then as it is in the public's interest for safety to ensure that any animal, which by nature can do what it chooses should it ever escape, is securely housed and well-cared for. Without regulations you are just asking for more of this kind of thing to happen, which is no doubt will. I think annually someone is attacked by their personal large cat, at least.
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Post by starlightcriminal on Oct 27, 2011 6:40:38 GMT -8
In fact, here is a quick list-
Feb 2010, Ontario man killed by pet tiger
Oct 2009, Pennsylvania woman killed by pet bear
May 2009, Pennsylvania girl mauled by pet mountain lion
April 2009, Colorado man mauled by pet tiger
Jan 2009, Maryland woman mauled by tiger at her "private sanctuary"
Nov 2008, Virginia child loses part of hand to tiger bite
Oct 2008, Oklahoma man killed by tiger in front of pre-schoolers at "interactive" sanctuary
Aug 2008, Illinois man mauled by tiger for small circus while training
Aug 2008, Missouri teen mauled by three tigers at "interactive" private zoo
Aug 2008, Missouri man mauled by tiger at private sanctuary, leg amputated
May 2008, Florida rapper bitten by his pet tiger while filming a music video
April 2008, California man training bear for live preformance killed
Dec 2007, California teen killed, two friends attacked at a zoo by a tiger that climbed fence
Dec 2007, California man mauled by pet tiger owned by celebrity Tippi Hedren (owns Michael Jackson's Tigers now)
July 2007, Texas zoo handler severely mauled by tiger while interacting with it inside enclosure
Aug 2005, Kansas teen killed while taking photograph with tiger at a private sanctuary
June 2005, Minnesota child mauled by pet lion and tiger at a bodyshop- child paralyzed and dependent on respirator
April 2005, Minnesota woman mauled by pack of tigers while cleaning enclosure at private sanctuary
Nov 2004, Florida child attacked by pet tiger exhibited at county fair
Jan 2004, North Carolina girl mauled by tiger her family kept in a cage behind their trailer
Dec 2003, North Carolina boy mauled and killed by aunt's pet tiger
Oct 2003, Nevada Roy (magician) mauled severely by his tiger which he refers to as a "pet" that "loves him"
Sept 2002, California kindergartner mauled by tiger at school function while tiger being led by owner/trainer
Aug 2000, Idaho woman mauled and then shot by tiger and people trying to subdue tiger (wow, bad luck!)
As you can see, events like this are not at all anomalous, averaging well over one a year as I had originally estimated. This is just the quick list I could find without much effort, I'm sure even more exist. Notice only one is at a public zoo and the larger percentage come from places where no permit is required for ownership.
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