Bureaucracy & Politicians Mishandled Kavaan

The oddest character at the time of shifting the loneliest elephant in the world at the Islamabad Zoo was Malik Amin Aslam, the advisor to the PM on Climate Change. He became an advisor in August 2018 when Pakistan Tehreeke Insaaf (PTI) came to power; he never visited the Islamabad Zoo or bothered to do anything for the animals at this Zoo or any other zoo in the country. In early 2019, a petition was filed to put a stop to the killing of stray dogs in Islamabad; nothing happened. A Petition was then filed regarding shifting of a dancing bear by Dr Anisur Rehman, Chairman of the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board who was being kept at the Islamabad Zoo in transit but which was now being not released to a bear sanctuary as had been planned. Subsequently, another petition was filed by Dr Nadeem Omar as director of Center for Culture & Development highlighting the plight of animals at the Islamabad Zoo and asking for relocating the only elephant at the zoo. The Islamabad High Court consolidated all the three petitions and heard them together; it asked Dr Uzma Khan of World Wildlife Fund to file a report regarding the plight of animals; this was done in May 2019. Throughout the hearing of these petitions in the Court, the Ministry of Climate Change and the Mayor of Islamabad on behalf of Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) kept explaining to the Court that `everything was perfect’ with the state of animals in the Islamabad Zoo and the petitions were frivolous. They suddenly woke up from their slumber when the Court in June 2020 held that the “animals at the Zoo were kept in conditions that tantamount to subjecting them to unnecessary pain and suffering’; that the elephant had “been treated cruelly by subjecting him to unimaginable pain and suffering for the past three decades”; that the elephant should be relocated to a suitable sanctuary within 30 days; that the Islamabad Wildlife Board shall move all the animals at the Zoo to their respective sanctuaries within 60 days; the Zoo will be taken-over by the Wildlife Board; and that the Minister-in-charge of the Climate Change Ministry and members of the Board shall be jointly liable for the welfare and well-being of each animal at the Zoo till their re-location.

The Ministry of Climate Change went into panic mode. MCI led by the Islamabad Mayor to begin with refused to hand-over the charge. Perhaps anticipating even a harsher reaction from the higher courts if an appeal is filed, the High Court order was not appealed against. The Climate Change Ministry officials and the ministers including both Mr Amin Aslam and Ms Zartaj Gul (of Covid-19 fame) were clueless. Incidentally, both the ministers and many of the superior officials of the Ministry were members of the Wildlife Board but they had not attended its single meeting. The responsibility by default rested with the Wildlife Board which suffered from paucity of funds, proper staff, and proactive Board members. Its Chairman single-handedly tried to implement the Court decision.

As luck would have it, two lions died on July 27, 2020 mainly due to smoke inhalation when fire was lit in their cage to force them to come out for re-location purposes to Lahore. Lighting fire in cages to force animals to leave is unheard of but this perhaps is the norm in this country. The High Court issued contempt notice to the Climate Change Ministers, its Secretary, and all the Board members which incidentally remain pending till date. What happened subsequently was hilarious. The Ministers have so far not appeared in the Court but the Secretary informed the Court that the Board membership has been changed and ministers are no longer its members. It remains to be seen what action the Court is going to take on the death of the two lions. The saga however has not ended because the only bear sanctuary in the country which is a private venture has refused to take the two brown bears at the Zoo despite the Court’s intervention.

Eventually, a European animal welfare organization Four Paws intervened and agreed to move these two bears to its sanctuaries in Jordan and Bulgaria which is in the process of being done. Four Paws had visited the Zoo in 2016 also to particularly examine the lonely elephant after the death of its partner in 2012 as the issue had been highlighted internationally by an American veterinarian Dr Samar Khan and her friend Faryal Gauhar; it had secured more than 500,000 signatures on a petition to re-locate Kavaan and had garnered the support of the well-known singer Cher. With nobody willing to take Kavaan and without a sanctuary in the country, Four Paws found an elephant sanctuary called Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary agreeing to take Kavaan.

The Government was nowhere to be seen. Transporting Kavaan to Cambodia by air was not cheap and costing more than half a million dollars. His container for transportation and training for this purpose was also expensive. The Government did not offer a single penny. Four Paws asked a US businessman Eric Margolis to fund the transportation; the balance of the cost was shared by Free the Wild which is a non-profit organization of Cher. All remaining costs were incurred by Four Paws out of its own resources.

As if all of the above was not tragic enough, the Climate Change Ministry in September challenged the presence of Four Paws in the country by writing to various ministries and agencies asking who had invited them and how its staff was working in the Zoo while on a visit visa. Eventually, they were asked to leave Pakistan after the expiry of their visas which was happening soon. The whole edifice appeared collapsing. An application was filed in the High Court suggesting that Dr Aamir Khalil, an Egyptian and an Austrian national of Four Paws be appointed as amicus curiae. He appeared before the Court on September 28, 2020 and the Climate Change Ministry pressure was released. Four Paws remained silent about the developments as it becomes difficult for it to function without the governments’ cooperation. It met the ministers but the prime minister never found the time to meet its team in Pakistan.

Kavaan finally left Pakistan on November 30^th morning. The advisor (with the dark glasses of course) appeared before a huge coterie of media present the day before while Kavaan was being transported. He told the media all the `great things’ his government was doing for the wildlife and how the government facilitated the re-location of Kavaan when it all along had opposed it. The government did not spend any money on its welfare, its re-location training, its medical treatment costs, its container and its transportation. Only God knows what he and other officials from the Ministry were doing there. Kavaan and myself were wondering about it too.