Sana’a Zoo, education through entertainment [Archives:2008/1144/Reportage]
April 7 2008
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For Yemen Times
For the Yemeni people, entertainment is the prime reason for Sana'a Zoo's huge and growing popularity. Green grass is now growing in many areas of the zoo. This attracts visitors, as it is a rare sight in Yemen's rocky desert landscape.
Visitors to the zoo have increased from 400,000 in 2003 to 560,000 in 2006. Yemenis love to picnic with their friends and families. A slope has been terraced with grass for this purpose. There are also two large playgrounds surrounded by grassy areas, flowers and small hedges. Facilities for visitors have improved. For example, there is a new cafe. However, more bathrooms are needed.
The animals provide great pleasure to visitors, who will stay at the zoo the whole day in a city lacking recreational areas and leisure facilities. While there were some newly-built cages waiting to be filled at the time of our visit in early 2007, we were disappointed to see the reptile house looking rather shabby and uncared for, compared with the past. Maintenance of what already exists is essential.
The zoo, meanwhile, also wishes to improve its breeding, and conduct research in conjunction with Sana'a University.
Education should be an important component at the zoo to increase conservation awareness in Yemen. Some efforts have recently started. Although no education center has been built yet, as was in the original plans, the Netherlands' embassy staff wish to develop an area of the zoo where people can learn about animals and their importance to the environment. Visitors would also be able to have more contact with small animals in this area. One of the most popular exhibits is the baboon enclosure, where people can now feed the baboons nuts through a chute.
Vets from the Sharjah Wildlife Breeding Center have also assisted recently by providing information boards for some of the animals, as well as helping with veterinary care. Gradually, all the cages should have these information boards with distribution maps to teach Yemenis and foreigners alike more about the country's indigenous animals. Yemen has some of the richest fauna and flora of the region, a fact that needs to be highlighted. It is also part of a vital migratory route for birds from Africa to Europe and signboards explaining the birds' migration paths should be placed at the aviaries. Yemenis must be asked to protect wildlife, on land, sea and in the air, which are increasingly threatened by man.
Yemenis have come a long way since we reported the desperate cruelty we witnessed in the late 1990s when the only zoo in the city was a private collection of animals in tiny cages that were taunted by their keepers to amuse the public.
Those days, thankfully, are over, and the animals in Sana'a Zoo are much better cared for. However, in order to improve the breeding of the four captive Arabian leopards (of which only about 200 remain in the wild in the Arabian Peninsula), more assistance and training are needed. Only one of these leopards was captive-born. There is a plan, with support from staff at the Embassy of the Netherlands, to extend the area behind the leopard cages (confusingly labeled tiger cages), which are presently too small. Lions are too numerous in crowded cages and need to be sterilized and exchanged for other animals.
There are also too many caracals, honey badgers, striped hyenas and jackals, and their cages are very small. On the other hand, the zoo needs a female oryx and a small gazelle. A new vet at the zoo is doing what he can to improve conditions, but would welcome greater assistance from other zoos.
The zoo is improving. The Sana'a authorities and people of Yemen value it. But it still has a long way to go and wants all the help and assistance it can get from the international community.
Rhino vs. jambiyas
The zoo has given us the opportunity to educate the public about the plight of the rhino. Yemen still imports more rhino horns than any other country, horns poached in East Africa. Although it is illegal to buy and carve new rhino horns, which are used to make handles for traditional daggers called jambiyas, the trade unfortunately continues; this demand must be reduced.
As at Taiz Zoo, we put up two billboards and two large banners in the zoo, with funding from the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria. They show pictures of wild animals with messages to save wildlife and also illustrations of rhinos, jambiyas, and a religious edict that the Grand Mufti made for us in 1993 stating that it is against the will of God to kill rhinos for their horns. The rhino crisis and edict will now receive far greater publicity. We also made signs for the zoo, such as 'The zoo is not a market to buy and sell animals' and notices on keeping the zoo clean and about animal behavior.
There are two species of rhinos in Africa: the black or hook-lipped rhino and the white or square-lipped rhino. In fact, both are grey in color. What makes the rhino unique is that it is the only animal with horns on its nose. Also, rhinos are one of the oldest mammals on our planet, having existed for 60 million years. Rhinos are herbivorous but they can run at 55 kph in order to charge or escape from their predators. This survival strategy does not work against man and his gun, and thousands of rhinos have been killed for their horns. From 1970 to the late 1980s the world's black rhino numbers fell by 97 percent from 65,000 to 2,450. Today, with heavy protection, there are 3,800. Northern white rhinos have plummeted by over 99 percent to just four today to meet the Yemeni demand for horns. Millions of dollars have been spent against rhino poaching, but females breed slowly, producing only one baby every two to five years. It takes a long time to build up numbers again.
Meanwhile, Yemen's demand for rhino horns continues unabated. It is essential to reduce this trade in order to curtail rhino poaching in East Africa. The most serious recent poaching has been in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the last remaining wild population of northern white rhinos was nearly wiped out.
From 30 rhinos in 2003 there are only four left. In Kenya, a minimum of 25 rhinos were illegally killed in Solio Game Reserve, Aberdare National Park, and Tsavo East National Park from 2003 to 2006.
In Sana'a, craftsmen continue their centuries-old tradition, carving jambiya handles. Although most are made of water buffalo horns from India, if just a handful of rhino-horn jambiyas are made per month it threatens the survival of the rhinos. While a jambiya with a good new water buffalo horn handle may sell for US $75, much more money can be made from crafting and selling one with a new rhino horn handle.
An average horn weighing 1.5 kg can produce three jambiyas costing perhaps US $ 1,000 each. Over the last few years, there has been a large and dramatic population increase in Yemen, and as nearly every male in the north of the country upon reaching puberty needs at least one jambiya, the trade flourishes. There are now more workshops and handle makers in Sana'a Souk (market) than ever. This growing demand for jambiyas, the most expensive of which always have rhino horn handles, gives even greater economic incentives to kill and trade in rhino horns.
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