Friday, October 10, 2008

The black buck and the tortoise - another GNP tale

One is fleet of foot, full of grace and with horns to kill for (or so it seems).
The other is endearingly slow, moves clumsily and deliberately and makes good soup(?)

Both are typical to this part of the world, endangered now, done in by our greed, and both are found in the Guindy National Park.  The GNP site claims there are 400 blackbucks in the sanctuary.  But there are rumblings among the naturalists that this number is far exaggerated.

Sorry, but I just cannot fathom how anyone could go around killing the black buck, or any protected animal for that matter, for sport.  What can be so sporty about hunting?  How can so uneven a contest be called a sport?  And did anybody ask the black buck whether it wanted to "play" in the first place?  


And the star tortoise has its own problems of being too endearing.  May I have one as a pet?  Every few months I read an article about how a hundred of them were seized by customs in Patna, another 1,000 on a Singapore-bound flight, another 600 at Kuppam railway station...

They dont do well as pets, most die from over feeding or wrong feeding, too much water, too little water, but still there are websites that persist in their trade, giving you tips on how you can care for them!  I came across a blog that giggles about her dad having bought these two start tortoises and then fed it Panadol?!  There are photos as well.

Yes, we will be in conflict with the animal world, as we try to survive and improve our lives.  But this is not survival, this is greed dont you think?  And selfishness.

4 comments:

  1. Pictures are fabulous! I think you should form a petition to stop all this, this..... whatever it's called(I can't get the word for it).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Mr.Kunnuswamy Pillay mummy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, thanx for visiting my blog. Anyway, those 2 star tortoises of my dad are growing healthily altho it has been 4 months that I don't see them. Mom said the bigger one reaches 1kg for its weight now! As for the smaller one, it weighs around 450g at the moment. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lovely pictures. Agree with you entirely - our greed, and sense of superiority and entitlement that the earth is more ours than the animals' needs to be stamped out. There is enough room for all of us to co exist peacefully.
    Kamini.

    ReplyDelete

Andamans Day 5 - The Andaman teals, and Daurian Starling show and other sidelights

 Continued from here.   Feb 14th 2024 evening There was no rest for the sleepy.  In order to maximise daylight hours and save time, we were ...