Animals in the News

The past month has been kind of interesting as far as animals are concerned. First there was this Sarawakian zoo worker who was mauled to death by two Siberian tigers at the Singapore zoo.Then, a tapir got lost and ended up in a drain in Kuala Selangor (top right picture).The next was the hope of turtles returning to Trengganu(previous post).Before that it was the vulnerable sun bears, soon to be housed in a RM2.1 million sun bear conservation centre being built in Sandakan, Sabah, next to the orang utan sanctuary at Sepilok

Best of all, today's news relates to the wild jumbos.

The New Straits Times reported:

MARAUDING elephants took centre stage in the house of parliament yesterday as several members of parliament spoke of the damage they were causing to smallholdings.
The MPs wanted to know the steps taken by the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to stop the wild jumbos.

Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan) complained that no effort had been made to check the perennial problem.

"I see there is no real effort by the federal and state governments to solve this.

"Countries like India and Thailand have successfully tamed their wild elephants. What about us?" he asked during the debate on the allocations for the ministry at the committee stage.

He suggested tongue-in-cheek that the wild elephants be relocated to the constituency of Fong Po Kuan (DAP-Batu Gajah) since it was named after the elephant.

Fong shot back good-naturedly, saying: "If the MP is wild, the elephants are also wild," alluding to Bung Mokhtar's often colourful antics.

She said wild elephants often invaded smallholdings and destroyed crops because humans had encroached into their habitat.

Talk about taming the wild animals, we can't even tame our Yang Berhormats, the parliamentarians!