WSPA Disaster Relief : Recent Interventions

September, 2008 From the field: Updates on current disaster relief and management Despite the cyclone season nearing its end, WSPA's disaster assessment and response teams (DARTs) remain busy across Asia and the Caribbean. Since January, WSPA has improved the welfare conditions of over 129,000 animals caught in disaster situations. Read more about our current relief efforts >>

The forgotten victims

Every year natural disasters or war wreak havoc on millions of people and their environment. The human tradgedy of these incidents is well documented, but less known is the plight of animals: all too often, they are the forgotten victims.

When people's properties are destroyed, animals homes often disappear too. Wild animals face the prospect of having to flee their home habitat to survive, whilst domesticated animals are at grave risk of remaining trapped and abandoned without food or water on farms, in people's homes, or even at zoos.

WSPA has worked for many years to do what it can for the animal victims of disasters. For over 25 years, the charity has become known as being often the first and sometimes the only organization that will go to the heart of a disaster to save the lives of animals.

This aspect of WSPA's work can be traced back to a landmark project undertaken almost 30 years ago. In 1964, WSPA staff directed the successful rescue and relocation of almost 10,000 animals in Suriname, South America, when an area of 600 square miles of rain forest was flooded during the construction of a hydroelectric dam.

In one of the biggest animal relocations ever undertaken, these animals were rescued and placed into a nature reserve. The project, 'Operation Gwamba', marked the first of countless disaster relief missions for WSPA

In 1984, WSPA provided desperately needed veterinary supplies to animals affected by the Bhopal disaster in India. Following another notorious man-made disaster, the radiation leak at Chernobyl in 1986, WSPA and its local member societies helped to feed and relocate hundreds of livestock to Poland.

Hundreds of abandoned pets and livestock were saved from volcano-hit Montserrat in the mid-1990s, with a series of airlifts organised by WSPA, as part of its work on this Caribbean island. WSPA swung into action once more during the forest fires that swept through Indonesia in the late 1990s, helping to save the country's highly endangered orangutans from the flames that destroyed many parts of their natural range.

As well as working to protect animals threatened by natural catastrophes, WSPA has a long track record of assisting animals caught up in human conflict. Just some of the war zones that WSPA has gone to in recent years include Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia, the Gulf and Afghanistan.

WSPA staff often come across individual animals in need of help. One example of this was the dramatic rescue of a starving puppy found lost in the deserted rubble of Plymouth, the former capital of Montserrat that had been devoid of any signs of life since being buried by volcanic ash. The puppy, named 'Plymmie', joined over a hundred other dogs that were airlifted to new homes in the US and now lives with his rescuer, WSPA's John Walsh.

It is not a foregone conclusion that every single disaster or conflict will have a direct impact on animals, but in situations where animals are in desperate need of help, WSPA works with the aid of its international network of member societies to do what it can.

WSPA's trained and experienced rescue teams often act as a catalyst to establish an organized and local response. This can range from working alongside local vets to provide badly needed medicines and supplies for treating sick or injured animals, to distributing food and water to desperately starving and dehydrated animals that may have been abandoned for days or weeks on end.

WSPA also helps to move animals away from danger, create temporary shelters or rehome rescued animals.In many places, the survival and well being of animals is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

Animals can play a key practical role in helping people get back to normal, whether it be the morale of having lost pets reunited with their owners, or helping to save invaluable livestock herds and thereby ensuring that traditional farming communities are able to continue as before.

Trevor Wheeler, a senior member of WSPA's disaster relief team, said,'In many parts of the world, WSPA is the only organisation which responds to natural or man made disasters which affect animals. Without WSPA many more animals would suffer or perish and many families would be without a much cherished resource or companion.

People who love their animals often have no time to save them during times of crisis and they are always grateful for our help. 'In Kosovo, WSPA staff came across the case of one family whose pet dogs had been shot as they attempted to guard their owner's abandoned farm from retreating Serbian forces.

WSPA managed to help provide emergency veterinary treatment and the dogs miraculously survived and were reunited with their grateful owners once the conflict had ended. The conflict in Kosovo was a classic example of how animals are often deliberately targeted during times of war, as a way of trying to destroy the morale of the enemy and damage any attempts to salvage valuable livestock herds.

WSPA enjoys official status with the United Nations (being a member of the UN's Economic and Social Council) and is often given cooperation and assistance by UN peacekeeping forces during the course of its work.

This also helps enable WSPA to respond quickly and secure access into countries ahead of time.A recent example of this was in Afghanistan, where a WSPA team was able to enter Kabul just days/weeks after the collapse of the Taliban regime.

In 2002 alone, recent operations have included a mercy mission to help the animals of Afghanistan's Kabul zoo, distribution of aid to animals affected by the floods in central Europe and Thailand, dealing with the aftermath of earthquakes in El Salvador, and giving aid to a WSPA member society in Zimbabwe helping animals abandoned as a result of the country's controversial farm clearances.

Donate now to the WSPA Disaster Relief Fund >>