Karma and the NSPCA

Only recently, I wrote a blog titled “What goes around” concerning the scandal of Ruth Padel having to resign from the Chair of Oxford Poetry due to her underhanded tactics against the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, and her defamation of myself in her book Tigers In Red Weather.

Just now, a friend in South Africa sent me an article that appeared in “the Star” on July 11th titled “‘Bullying’ NSPCA chief in dog box”. It started as follows:

“The CHIEF executive officer of the National Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals is under fire for allegedly mismanaging the organisation, misusing the perennial cash-strapped body’s funds and bullying her staff.. SPCA staff approached the Office of the Public Protector to complain that Alberton-based NSPCA chief executive Marcelle Meredith had received inordinate salary increases, that she would regularly receive “inappropriate” luxury vehicles as company cars and that she would ruthlessly deal with employees who question her.”

And the Public Protector concluded in a report to the then agriculture minister Lulu Xingwana: “Upon careful consideration of the facts before us, the Office of the Public Protector is of the view that there may exist serious organisational and human relationship problems within the NSPCA, and that many appear to have their origin in an unaccountable management style.”

Is this Karma, or what? In the Wikipedia definition, Karma is described as follows:
“Karma” is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies. In these systems, the effects of all deeds are viewed as actively shaping past, present, and future experiences. The results or 'fruits' of actions are called karma-phala.”
This news story is well in line with the grapevine reputations of Meredith who has reigned at the NSPCA for 17 years. I have never met her, but her reputation is well known to me through many sources. One is through ex-NSPCA staff members. And another is of course through the famous five-year fight that NSPCA launched against us. It started with the NSPCA’s threat of criminal prosecution of my team for providing cockerals for our nearly extinct tigers to learn hunting. When they failed to convince the police to prosecute us on this account and the subsequent “live blesbok” supply to tigers, they embarked on a long civil suit against us which cost us millions of rands in order to defend our project and our staff.
We won the case, and won also the appeal, as well as NSPCA’s appeal to the supreme court and the NSPCA was order to pay our legal costs. Our success in court was widely reported in the South African press which prompted readers writing to us showing support and declaring withdrawal of their support for the NSPCA. However, the NSPCA has continued to pursue, which I have no doubt to be Meredith’s determined personal vengeance against us. I often wondered what good could be achieved if the NSPCA actually went after the real animal cruelty issues such as canned lion hunting operators, instead of wasting money prosecuting legitimate conservation programs like ours? As we said before, we are saddened that NSPCA’s compassion for animals does not extend to those that are critically endangered like the Chinese tiger. However, after all, it is donor money Meredith was using to pay her legal advisors to crucify our project, whose founders (Stuart and myself) are not only not paid for their services to the charity, but contributed their own life savings of millions of dollars to it.
The NSPCA was created back in a 1962 Act that gave it police-state-like powers. Even now the public prosecutor has no jurisdiction and its activities seem unaccountable to anyone, let alone taxpayers. Asked about her salary, Meredith pointed out that the NSPCA does not fall under the Companies Act.
Now reading this expose of Meredith on my computer screen, I must say, this has got to be Karma!

WHAT GOES AROUND…

-Ruth Padel vs. Derek Walcott and Me
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8067432.stm

A few years ago, a nice young British college graduate who was volunteering at our Laohu Valley Reserve, asked me if I knew someone named Ruth Padel. That name rang a bell, but I simply could not place her. Then the young chap told me that this Padel person had written about me in her book, and showed me the book he was reading... Oh Yes, of course! The memories came back. My Goodness, she has written the book! I had totally forgotten about her and the book she was planning to write.

I told the nice young chap enthusiastically that I had not only met her, but had invited her home and cooked her a Chinese dinner, and that my husband and I talked to her extensively about our project, after she had contacted me out of the blue. I wanted to help her since she was writing a book about tigers, and I was delighted to be of service to her, also out of respect for Darwin, who appeared to be Padel’s great-great-grandfather, having been born a staunch Darwinian myself in China. I happily offered to help her making contacts in China, should she need, for her book research.

After that dinner at our apartment, I no longer heard from Padel, except one occasional message to ask my help in making contact for her in China. I wondered for some time what had become of her book but firmly believed she was no longer writing it, since I was convinced she would have let me know about it. And I certainly would buy a copy in support of her and the tigers.

Now, seeing Padel’s book in the hands of this volunteer, I was quite excited and asked him if I could have a quick read of the section about me. The young chap appeared reluctant but hesitantly said “yes”, adding somewhat embarrassingly that the book was not very positive about me. My heart dropped. What could I have possibly said or done to be written about negatively by Ms. Padel? All I had given her was kindness and generosity in support of her work, for the sake of tigers. I told the young volunteer that I really would not mind criticism, particularly constructive ones. And I am also used to malicious personal attacks on me, by the likes of Judy Mills of Conservation International, for example, in a Wall Street Journal article a few years ago. I am strong enough to handle whatever nonsense possibly written about me in Padel’s book.

The young chap reluctantly handed the book “Tigers in Red Weather” to me, adding that he had been in our project for the past few weeks and he loved it, and that he strongly believed what we were doing is not only fantastic, but the right thing to do for the South China Tigers. I was grateful for him, since what I subsequently read in Padel’s book made me seethe with anger.

Padel has not only misrepresented facts about our project, but attacked me with such sarcasm as if she held grudges against me personally. For example, she said in her book: “Li Quan’s ideas were inspired by captive predators trained to hunt to camera”. This could not be further from truth and at minimum was twisting of my words by Padel. She knew what I was trying to do was inspired by what China was already doing at Meihuashan Chinese Tiger Rehabilitation project. In fact, she asked my assistance to make arrangements to visit Meihuashan after I had told her about it. All I attempted was trying to do the same in a more professional manner in a country with more conservation expertise and more wildlife resources to give the South China Tigers a head start in their rewilding training.

Another example, she wrote: “Save China’s Tigers scheme seems glamorous. There is money and publicity in it”. I wonder where Ms. Padel had seen money and publicity? My husband and I spent millions of our personal savings on the project, without a single cent of return, all because we believe that saving the cultural symbol of China - the King of Beasts, is not only good for restoring the eco-systems, but also conducive to saving the traditional cultural values of China. To date, unlike many big NGOs, we have not spent a cent on hiring PR, either in-house or external, and we gained good publicity through our actions and dedication to our goal. Yet Padel saw money and publicity in her eyes.

She wrote that I “seemed to have ignored the world’s top scientific advice. She may release a few tigers in a closed reserve but this will have nothing to do with conservation and will never lead to a viable wild population. It seemed a terrible waste of enormous tiger funds”. Wait a minute, didn’t I tell you, Ms. Padel, we can not save the Chinese tiger as a whole, if we don’t save the first few to start with? Didn’t we tell you, the tiger funds came from our savings, not from other donor agencies since the big NGOs had already pronounced the South China Tiger dead or not worth saving? Didn’t I tell you the reason we are attempting this innovative conservation project is because the big NGO’s are doing nothing to save the South Chinese tiger except criticise the efforts of those who are? Didn’t I tell you we did not want to give our money to these big NGOs as we see little action from them in saving the tigers and see huge expenses on marketing, administration and PR?

She wrote that “Li Quan also wants to change the name of the South China Tiger to Zhonggauo Hu. Zhonggauo means ‘Middle Kingdom’, the formal name for China: that name would make it simply ‘Chinese Tiger’. Excluding China’s other tigers, the real wild tigers of China today.” And that “I had seen with Wang and Cao how effective that plan would be. (The Chinese tiger - of course!) Her English press releases have subtly switched from ‘South Chinese Tigers’ to ‘Chinese Tigers (also named the South China Tiger)’. I don’t want to be nit picking, but Zhonggauo should be spelled Zhongguo. Secondly, I don’t blame Ms. Padel for failing to know that Zhongguo is also Zhongguo in informal term, since it is Chinese for China. Third, but not last, despite her extensive research, it is sad to see that Ms. Padel still has not learned that the term of the “Chinese Tiger” is not my invention, but has been used by the conservation community to distinguish it from other tigers, such as the Indian (Bengal) Tiger.

She also called our goal to release rewilded tigers back to China’s natural environment during the time of the 2008 Olympic Games and my effort to get the tiger adopted as its Mascot “a sick joke”. Never mind how much this sounded like what Ms. Judy Mills said in the Wall Street Journal Article, branding our effort “a circus side show”. It also goes to show how little she really cared about conservation, since in my opinion, anyone who wants to do something for conservation (never mind those who are spending huge amount of their own savings to do so) and any effort by any person to help the planet should be encouraged, particularly when there are only a small percentage of people who are taking actions to protect nature, and when the species are disappearing at a far greater rate than at any other time in history.

I bought Ruth Padel’s book upon returning to London. I looked at it from time to time. I wanted to keep on reminding myself that our project had not been easy and will continue to face challenges, particularly political ones like this. I will have to grind my teeth, bear the humiliation and continue fighting for the tigers and prove the nay-sayers wrong, as I cant afford to engage in a costly legal battle to get Padel’s publisher to withdraw her book from the shelf despite her misrepresentations of our project.

All these old memories resurfaced today, when I saw the news on BBC “Oxford poet 'sorry' over vote row”. Guess things do come back around?!

Why Why Why?!

It puzzles me more and more that Cathay has still not come into estrus. Over eight months have passed since she was separated from her sons JenB and Coco. We have been informed by various sources on the estimated time it would take for a tigress to come into estrus after separation from her cubs. Shanghai Zoo, with one of two largest breeding population of South China Tigers in China, said it normally takes two to three months after cubs are taken away from her, usually when the cubs are three months old. Other source says records taken from captive cats show a range of 75 to 592 days. Still another says it takes seven months.. It is very difficult to observe such events in the wild, so our project could be an ideal platform for finding out the situation with a wild tigress.

Anyway, we have done all we could. We moved her far away from her cubs so she could not see them for quite a while. We let her hunt for a few months to "forget" about her cubs. Having exhausted all available strategies, we decided to separate her from TigerWoods for a while, and putting her next to 327. I recall how excited she was when she first met 327 two years ago, chasing him around in the most enticing posture, and it might just take 327 again to excite her system. Some tigers seem to need just the presence of one potential mate. But other tigers are more like cheetahs, who would only come into estrus when there are more than one male present.

Cathay is such an intelligent cat. She seemed to know what we had in store for her and it was easy to get her leaving TW behind, and crossing three gates into the camp adjacent to 327 on April 29. New smells abound, as Madonna and her cubs spent quite a while here. Cathay was absorbed by the smells, busily sniffing and spraying.

May 4th, we let Cathay into 327's camp. We did this with much trepidation, as I still recall how 327 was terrified of Cathay and how they might end up fighting if he defends himself. To my complete surprise, 327 was extremely friendly to Cathay! All this year and half of life in the wild and in solitude may have served him well that he certainly became more of an gentleman. The two played a few games of hide and seek. Seeing nothing harmful happened to them, we decided to let them overnight together. Next morning, we came to see if anything dramatic had happened and were pleased all remained calm.

TigerWoods, however, are not very happy to be left alone. For several days, we heard him roaring, either calling for his mate Cathay, or complaining to us about being left alone. He refused to eat any food. Isn't this an expression of love by TW for Cathay? I don't want to be accused of endowing human emotions and values on animals but our evolutionary paths were the same throughout most part of our development. We must share similar emotions with other mammals. In the end, after a few days of hunger strike by TW, we did not have much choice but to decide to switch Cathay back and forth between TW and 327.

Meanwhile, King Henry and Princess are getting more comfortable in the 42 Ha camp, exploring further afield from the riverside area. For two days, after they made two kills, they even refused to come out. I was beginning to worry that the antelopes might have done damage to them. I was also worried that I might not see them for a while before I would leave Laohu Valley on May 10th. In fact, I made a bet of 50 US dollars with my friend  who came to visit during the weekend of May 8th, that they would not come out during our last afternoon drive. The sun was setting and I was about to drive out of the hunting camp and win my bet, when Vivienne spotted the silent appearance of King Henry! His demeanour had changed. Instead of making grandious announcement for his appearance, he quietly approached, as if stalking us. This made me more convinced that he made at least one kill this time, and was continuing to practice his successful hunting techniques now. I was relieved to see him, and to see he was intact.

Then, as if to grant my wish, Princess also peeped her little shy head from behind the tree branches, just when I started my truck's engine again. I was pleased that I had lost my 50 dollars completely by now, to say the least!!

I left Laohu Valley happy, but looking forward to my next visit again in a few months. So I still find no answer to Cathay's estrus mystery, except to say that she may be needing a rest after carrying two litters of cubs so close to one another. Madonna mated last year around this time. So if tigers do mate seasonally, as some say, Cathay should be mating now. May be soon? May be never? Maybe she will just keep me wondering why!!!

-TigerLi from SA, May 11 2009