Photo Credit : WSPA-IFAW-T.Stargardter

Nearly six weeks after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, IDA continues our work to help animals in Haiti. IDA supports the animal disaster relief efforts though a coalition of NGOs. ARCH, as the coalition is called, has assembled a team of veterinarians, vet techs and animal disaster relief responders, and is engaging with the Haitian veterinary community as well to help animals every day. So far, over 2,300 animals including 500 dogs and cats and hundreds of other animals – mainly cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken, horses and donkeys – have been treated for their injuries and ailments. More resources have also been sent into Haiti to help the team on the ground every day. This includes a fully fitted mobile veterinary clinic that has just been brought into Port-au-Prince after much hard work and negotiations. Further reinforcements such as medical supplies and animal care personnel has enhanced the already existing international relief team.

With the mobile clinic reaching into the affected areas, people are lining up with their animals. The team from the ground reports: “Now that we’ve got the mobile clinic, we can have two lines of people waiting: one outside for dogs, aggressive animals and animals from farms, and another one inside for cats and wounded animals.”

Photo Credit : WSPA-IFAW-T.Stargardter

Ten year old Kenny brought his dog Vito, who had an infection. “It has been sick for a long time, but I don’t know any vets and don’t have any money to take it to one”, said Kenny. We gave the dog antibiotics and vitamins, and we’ll come back next week to check its progress.

At IDA, we are here for the animals and to make a difference for those who are often forgotten in natural disasters.

Support IDA’s Animal Disaster Relief Fund.

Learn more about IDA’s work in Haiti. For more information about how you can help IDA help animals affected by disasters, please contact us at disasterrelief@idausa.org.

This photo says it all. They need our help and we are there.

IDA is on the ground in Haiti, with our representative Connie Durkee working as part of an animal disaster relief team in Port-au-Prince now. Together with the Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti (ARCH), which is coordinating with Sociedad Dominicana para la Prevención de Crueldad a los Animales (SODOPRECA) from the Dominican Republic, IDA’s Connie Durkee has been responding to help animals since Sunday, January 24th. With the support of the Haitian government and international agencies, the team has been identifying the country’s most pressing animal-related problems, as well as exploring options for creating a wide-ranging, long-term plan to improve infrastructure for veterinary care, vaccination programs and animal population control services.

As part of a 12-member animal disaster relief team of veterinarians, vet techs and disaster responders, IDA’s Connie, is traveling back and forth every day from a safe zone into the streets of the devastated city of Port-au-Prince, to rescue animals in distress and provide care for ill and injured animals. In addition to having veterinary support staff on the ground in Haiti to provide medical care to animals, IDA has sent funds through ARCH to help pay for a mobile veterinary clinic, medicine and supplies that are being used to help animals every day in Haiti.

IDA’s Connie reports: “Many animals need help on the ground. One of them was a dog who was rescued nearly two weeks after the quake. We are so glad we could be here on time to be able to treat him, provide much needed care and reunite him with his animal guardian.”

She also reports that they have also been providing much needed veterinary care for animals whose families have been dealing with severe poverty even before the disaster. Stopping to teach the families how to apply medicine for manage and other medical concerns such as ear infections and tick infestations. Read Connie’s –  Diary from Inside Haiti

The ARCH team is continuing to search out “street dogs” but because they are so timid, they maybe “hiding out” still.

As the team responds to help animals, they quickly realize the need for reinforcements – more veterinary assistance, medicine, and equipment. And IDA is ready to help.

Our immediate need is for your financial support. Help us help animals in Haiti, while also preparing to respond quickly to assist animals affected in other disasters. Support IDA’s Animal Disaster Relief Fund.

Learn more about IDA’s work in Haiti. For more information about how you can help IDA help animals affected by disasters, please contact us at disasterrelief@idausa.org.

Thank you for your generosity and caring in this moment of crisis.

I attended a meeting last Thursday, November 12, that was set up to explain to county residents why this slaughter is necessary. It seems we have lost biodiversity and now we must kill the deer to regain it.Here’s how it works. Once upon a time, before 1800, we lived in an idyllic landscape consisting of approximately 15 deer per square mile. Then the human species got busy, clear cutting the forests and killing predatory species like wolves and coyotes. Deer, too, were virtually wiped out by 1850.

But when all the farmers who had clear cut the lands started moving west, the forests returned. Some people decided it would be good to reintroduce the deer. So with no human or animal predators and the forests a-flourishing, the deer proliferated.

Now, however, we must kill them for decimating the forest floor, along with Mrs. Smith’s tulips. You see, even though humans have turned the entire ecosystem on its head, we are indignant that we can’t enjoy all the same plant species that were here 100 years ago. That’s where the biodiversity part comes in. Our forests don’t look like we want them to. So in order to restore biodiversity, we must kill deer to return their population to that elusive 15 per square mile (even though there is some belief that it is below this number in many areas of Westchester) and, in so doing, we will reverse all the turmoil that has resulted from our housing developments, golf courses, strip malls, and decimation of a bevy of larger species.

Some people are not buying this argument. We question how a plan for single species management can possibly offset all the other variables that have already been tampered with in the environment. One panel speaker, a representative from the Humane Society of the U.S., offered a refreshing opposition to killing deer, and pointed out that our forest floor may look different today because forests go through stages. Old growth forests have a dense canopy with little light that doesn’t permit the kind of ground cover we think we should have. In other words, the natural world we covet may in fact be more fiction than fact.

It turns out that killing deer as a management solution is not without its problems. For one thing, there is a demonstrated rebound effect whereby deer fertility will balloon in response to decline in species numbers. In a short time, we will be back where we started. That’s the thing about nature. It really was set up to keep things in order, despite human intervention.

Worse still, with an average population density of 2,134 human inhabitants per square mile, Westchester County, it turns out, is a poor choice for hunting of any sort.  Our public officials acknowledge that, yet they also quickly dismissed non-lethal forms of deer management. Can they really believe that biodiversity will return at the expense of rationality?

Westchester County is not alone. Scores of communities throughout the U.S. are dealing with the new face of suburban hunting. As human populations grow, and as deer are forced to live in increasingly limited habitat, deer-human conflicts will rise. But killing deer with guns or arrows doesn’t work in the long run, and is hardly a viable option in areas of high human population. To think that killing deer in our county parks will restore forest biodiversity is a fairy tale. We need real world solutions, and we need to develop ways to co-exist with nature in an increasingly modified world.

This is the new face of human-wildlife interactions that will only increase as we go forward. IDA’s plea is for a sane plan that respects and tolerates the natural world, including its nonhuman inhabitants. This is our challenge—indeed it is our mandate, and with the help of compassionate people everywhere, we will work to get it accomplished.