"It is worth for a nice shoot, but please give your models quality foods"
<< PARADISE LOST >> @ 22 August 2010, 0:08
With great sadness I announce the death of Sinbad, the last white-bellied sea eagle in Langkawi. For the past three years, Sinbad has been the only representative of his breed in the island. He cut a lonely figure, patrolling the skies between Burau Bay and Datai Bay, endlessly seeking a mate. He was often to be found fishing off Skull Beach, carrying his catch to the flat rock at the west end of Pebble Beach and calling to his long-dead young.
After I heard the news, I was able to track down Irshad Mubarak, Dev Das, and Wendy Chin, to get their reactions. ‘Well,’ said Dev, ‘we first warned about this in 1995. But no-one wanted to know.’ Sinbad’s problems can be traced, as can those of much of our wildlife, to the decision in 1989 to turn Langkawi into a Freeport.
Overnight, visitor numbers increased ten-fold as modern hotels were built along our shore-line. All too soon, tourists wanted and expected more than duty-free shopping to keep them occupied. More and more of the island was opened up. New caves were discovered in the mangroves. More boats began to ply up and down the Kilim river. Every day, thousands of people were taken on the rivers to see the bats in the caves. Competition between the boatmen became feverish. ‘ What new experience can we offer?’, they thought.
Some sea-fisherman thought they had the answer. They had noticed how, when they gutted their catch at sea, eagles would gather. When the guts were jettisoned, the eagles would swoop on the floating mess for a free meal. So began ‘eagle-feeding’. Within a few years, boatmen on the Kilim were using cheap chicken skin and restaurant scraps to feed the eagles. Almost immediately, some of the effects were obvious. Quickly growing used to free food, the bulk of the island’s eagle and kite population moved into the mangrove and they became a rare sight in the rest of the island. Local nature guides, including Dev, Irshad and Wendy, continually warned against eagle feeding. They ran their own, ecologically sound, tours in the mangrove. They lobbied government to have the practice banned. The lectured hotel staff, tourists and children on the subject and wrote papers for the press. Nothing worked.
Around 2010, it became apparent that the eagle population was dropping. Unable to hunt for themselves, they were dependant on the tourist boats for food. The steroids in the commercially farmed chicken made them fat and unhealthy. Their life-span became shorter as their hearts and lungs suffered. They became decimated by diseases such as avian flu and salmonella.
As these things were noted, so was a rise in disease in the human population, as more and more anti-biotic resistant strains entered the water sources. The factory farmed chicken contained antibiotics. Also, and most importantly, it contained hormones. These hormones first made the birds reluctant to breed, then weakened the eggshells of those which did. Some birds were unable to breed at all. The gene pool shrank rapidly. In-breeding then quickly resulted in deformed birds. Eventually, those few who were fit, fled Langkawi. It is interesting to note, that the date on which Sinbad became the last eagle in Langkawi, coincided with that on which the last tourist left the island.
The above is a work of fiction. Please help us keep it that way. Boycott eagle feeding now. (By Pam @ 22 August 2010, 0:53)
P/S: Thanks guys. if anyone wants to use this to raise awareness please do. (By Pam)
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