{"id":101775,"date":"2020-04-30T15:53:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T22:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101775"},"modified":"2020-04-30T15:55:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T22:55:14","slug":"crows-have-a-right-to-glide-the-skies-and-roam-freely-in-any-part-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/30\/crows-have-a-right-to-glide-the-skies-and-roam-freely-in-any-part-of-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Crows have a Right to glide the skies and roam freely in any part of Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Arahant\n Mahinda in his very first encounter with King Devanampiyatissa at\nMihintale 2300 years ago delivered an invaluable piece of advice to the King:\nHe said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh! Great\nKing, the birds that glide the skies and animals that roam the forests have an\nequal right to live and move about in any part of this land as thou. The land\nbelongs to the people and all other living beings and thou art only the\nguardian of it”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This utterance of\nArahant Mahinda is one of the greatest statements made in the history of both\nhuman and animal rights, as it defines the space that both categories are\nmutually entitled to.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to\nshare some thoughts on the value of birds particularly crows to our Sri Lankan\nsociety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time in year\n2002 there were reports in the newspapers of the destruction of the lives of\nover 150 crows in the heart of Colombo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

150\ncrows had died in Colombo by consuming a chemical known as carbo-fluran. \nIt was said that a leading Hotelier in Colombo 3 had deliberately poisoned\nthese birds since it was found that the Crows were interfering with the Hotel\u2019s\noutdoor Buffet arrangements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaving\nfood mixed with poison for animals is barbaric conduct and a clear infringement\nof the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance, No. 13 of 1907, which is\nstill the governing legislation despite its obsolescence. Rs. 100.00 is the\nmaximum fine for committing a heinous crime on an animal under this\nlegislation. The quantum of the fine has not changed since 1907, thereby\nrevealing the insensitivity of our current political leadership and lawmakers\nto crimes against animals and their suffering, in the country.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nSri Lanka is taken to task internationally on lack of statutory recognition of\nanimal rights than on violation of human rights as we see happening today at\nUNHRC in Geneva we will have nowhere to look. The lack of political will in Sri\nLanka to extend effective legislative protective cover to defenseless animals\nis unsettling to all those who care for these voiceless sentient beings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crows<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crows\nconstitute a part of the traditional Fauna and is an important link in the\necology of this country. It is a natural scavenger and discharges a vital\nfunction by complementing the role of the Municipal Council in removing rubbish\nfrom the roads and alleys of Colombo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any one closely\nobserving the Crows would realize that they are also an intelligent species.\nLike children of human beings, young Crows love to play between themselves and\nsometimes with other species. They can be very exciting to watch when they are\nengaged in their little games, and moving from tree to tree, telephone pole to\ntelephone pole or roof top to roof top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who dislike\nor destroy crows are those who are alienated from the traditional Buddhist\nculture of this country. They are unaware of a long – established bond that\nexists between mainly rural people and this bird and why people in some parts\nof this country still religiously participate in \u2018Balukaputu Dana \u2019 \u2013 feeding\nstray dogs and crows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is enough scientific evidence to demonstrate that crows are\nsome of the most intelligent of the birds, and may also be more intelligent than\nmany of the highly regarded mammals such as cats and monkeys. Given their\nsuperior brain power ( compared to other animals ), their love of play, their\ntightly knit family groupings, their preference for life-long mate pairing,\ntheir relatively simple lifestyle, and a rather complex ability to communicate\nwith sound, crows are entitled to a lot more respect than has come their way\nfrom some uncaring humans. It is no wonder that in some regions of the world\nwhere crows and ravens are common, the indigenous peoples have often placed\nthese birds very high in their totem pole or scale of reverence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homo Sapiens<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nplanet Earth belongs to all living beings. If there is an over population of\none species then the chief culprit are the Homo Sapiens. (Homo Sapien \u2013 Latin\nfor \u2018wise man\u2019). Humans have been increasing in numbers exponentially and\nencroaching on the living spaces of other non \u2013 human living beings. The crow\nis an intelligent animal performing a vital service in scavenging and cleaning\nthe environment. It would be an ecological disaster if crows are removed from\nour environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\naccumulation of garbage and food waste at Colombo Public places and parks is\nlargely the fault of the CMC. If the work is done on time then there will not\nbe waste matter for the Crows to feed on or pick and drop pieces here and\nthere. But this is not widespread as some allege. If the trash at public places\nis collected daily and properly then the crow population will decrease rapidly.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extermination\nof the Sparrow in China<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chairman\nMao Tse Tung (later called Mao Zedong) when\nhe was the leader of China, made the mistake of exterminating the Sparrows and\nit led to the greatest mass starvation in history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1958 Mao Zedong, decreed that all the\nsparrows in the country were to be killed. He decided that China could do\nwithout pests like sparrows. Mao thought that sparrows ate too much grain and\nit seemed rational to him for all sparrows to be killed. Sparrows were getting\nin the way of the economic development of China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People were mobilized to eradicate the\nbirds. They used beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to\nfly until they died of exhaustion. People tore down sparrow nests and shot\nsparrows down from the sky. The result of the campaign was to push the birds\nclose to extinction in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of this\nill-conceived decision was that it caused a domino effect of destruction. Three\nyears later, as many as 45 million people were dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disastrous nature of\nthe Great Sparrow Campaign became evident in 1960. It was discovered that the\nsparrows didn’t only eat grain seeds. They also ate insects. With no birds to\ncontrol them, insect populations boomed. Locusts among other insects swarmed\nall over the country, eating everything they could find \u2014 including crops\nintended for human consumption. On the other hand, people quickly ran out of\nthings to eat, and millions starved. Though the numbers of fatalities vary,\nsome scholars, estimate that the fatalities were as high as 45 or even 78\nmillion. Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng, who chronicled the famine in his book “Tombstone<\/a>,”\nestimates the deaths at 36 million people. (The book, published in the U.S. is\nbanned in China.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mao Zedong wanted to conquer nature. But\nhe lost that battle. His policies led to a famine in which millions of lives\nwere lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some echoes of this disaster in\nthe Coronavirus Pandemic which started in the Wet Markets of Wuhan, China in\nDecember 2019. Abuse of wild animals e.g. bat, has led to a virus jumping the\nspecies barrier and the rest using a clich\u00e9 \u2018is history\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senaka Weeraratna<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Advisor <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice for Animals Sri\nLanka <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna Arahant  Mahinda in his very first encounter with King Devanampiyatissa at Mihintale 2300 years ago delivered an invaluable piece of advice to the King: He said: “Oh! Great King, the birds that glide the skies and animals that roam the forests have an equal right to live and move about in any part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senaka-weeraratna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}