Letter from Vance G. Martin (6/4/99)

More Information About IPAN Animal Refuge Veterinary Services Education Animal Conditions Project Reports "Loki" the Indian Elephant and related issues How you can help

29 May, 1999

To Whom It May Concern:

INDIA PROJECT FOR ANIMALS AND NATURE (IPAN)

The link between rural domestic animals and the health of wildlife and wildlands is an important and consequential, but normally neglected issue in ecosystem management. Because the problem has tenacious roots and often involves social, biological and political aspects in addition to veterinary, it is often controversial and sometimes dangerous.

This work is routinely overlooked or dismissed by conservationists, wildlife biologists, park managers, game wardens and other natural resource professionals. Yet there are few issues as important, especially as rural populations expand in developing nations. In my 25 years of international environmental work, I have seen few groups with the skill, courage and persistence to tackle this critical matter.

In November, 1998, I led a group of 30 natural resource professionals from many countries through south India. We visited the IPAN headquarters at their sanctuary in Mudumalai, in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. This area is one of the world’s "hotspots" of high biological endemism, and is under serious threat. Embracing numerous wildlife reserves and parks, it is an extremely rural area, straddling three state governments and is a long way from the seat of national government. It is a biological treasure under great duress from inadequate finance, shortage of trained staff, and conflicting administrative bureaucracies. It is besieged by the needs of an expanding local population and an influx of foreign funds to encourage tourism and development.

In the midst of all this, there is acutely inadequate veterinary care for the rising number of domestic animals, including cattle, donkeys, dogs, buffalo and more. Also, cutting through the Biosphere Reserve are poorly maintained but important routes of national transportation which are also used for trucking domestic stock or driving them on foot to market.

In such a situation, the potential of negative impact of domestic animals on wildlife and wildland sustainability is extremely high, through disease transfer, overgrazing, spread of exotic diseases, and more. Ms. Deanna Krantz and her team of largely volunteer workers have tackled this issue in an effective and productive manner. They have done this with professional skill and great compassion for the domestic animals, their owners, the many villagers, and the wildlife officials, as well as for the wildlife and ecosystem which completely surrounds them. They are always on call, day and night, and provide an invaluable service in many ways.

The issues that IPAN deals with are tough, unglamorous and controversial, yet are vital to ecosystem health. They have developed a model worth emulating throughout the world.

Vance G. Martin
President
The WILD Foundation
P.O. Box 1380
Ojai, CA 93024
Tel: 805-640-0390
Fax: 805-640-0230
Email: info@wild.org