After an exchange of more than 150 mails with members of the WSPA (UNO commission in charge of the canine populations management), exchange initiated by the Pegasus Foundation then alerted by the Club Med cats affair on the Tiahura motu of Moorea Is., we got to organize an audit of the situation in Polynesia by WSPA experts in August 1999.
At the moment, we were less than 3 years old of an existence awfully isolated, and our experience could only get enriched by a knowledge gained after more than 150 years of practice at the Earth scale.
In application of the strategies advocated by the UNO concerning Pets overpopulation and described in our solutions , we search, since 1999, to organize a first free sterilisation campaign in Polynesia with all possible partners.
The first reaction was indifference when it wasn't hostility.
Indifference, from country and Communes authorities, with very rare exceptions, and hostility from the main of our local vets.
Exceptions :
Anyway, these first mini-campaigns were based upon the temporary transfert of a SDR vet, who quickly became unavailable, as we will see.
Hostility, from French authorities (Haut Commissariat de la République Française) from which a representative (having today left the country, but who showed himself an unflinching defender of the sytematic massacre and of a condescending contempt against us) taking a malicious pleasure to receive us to drop our folder to the garbage almost under our eyes,
and mainly some of the little twenty private local vets practicing for the whole 250.000 people inhabiting Polynesia. These some opponents are making a little core powerful, unhealthy and greedy, the paranoia of whom sweep the others on slopes of which the scope you can jugde by yourself.
They though - among others - clever :
... This list is neither complete, nor ended, but blindness is full and reason is going lost.
We didn't add provocation to their owns. We only protect us against. Polynesia is small and all becomes known one day. Time will proove the Truth, like always here. We only hope that Life will become bearable for all polynesian Pets and we fight only for that.
We hope also that, in the trust, the most manipulated will have, one day, the strenght to face blackmails and diktats of the most perverse ones so that they will cease to be harmfull to the vet profession, animals and people.
We prefer, from very far, organize campaigns with the support of the most realists of our local vets, like Bora-Bora's one. It is far more efficient and easier than without them. They well know, these ones, that sterilisation campaigns reduce in the long term, Pets overpopulation without harming their own interests, but increase their fame, make their potential customers more aware, more easily and for longer than a systematic fanatic opposition, believing protecting their interests against an imaginary ennemy, but without other effect than harming the whole population and the veterinarian profession itself.
Be serious: The part of responsability of the private vet trust is enormous in the present Pet overpopulation. It is not total, but enormous: The differents pollings and micro-pollings done by professionnals and journalists show that quite ALL those who have heared about sterilisation haven't done it because of its price.
It is understandable, in fact: The medium income in Polynesia is of about 250.000 F cfp/month/home. In average, there are 3 children by home and also 3 Pets. Thus, the public price forced by the private vets would induce an expense of 90.000 F cfp by home, (not taking in account the post-surgery visits and services).
At such a price, the huge majority of the polynesian population will never be able to sterilize his Pets, even if wanted!
This established fact continue since several decades: The present clientele of the private vets is based solely on the highest incomes and on compassionnates sacrifying their means beyond the limits of the reasonnable to try without hope to dyke a plague so cleverly upkept. The others never step into the clinics of the profession.
From there, to conclude that Polynesian vets are doing nothing, there is a step which is not to be taken: In 1999, an agreement was taken between all local vets to help Pets Protection Associations without discrimination (at the moment). Since, this agreement, in the main, was respected for Fenua Animalia, until February 2004 when it has been broken down unilaterally, illegaly, and without any prior notice, by the trust, when Bora's campaign became ineluctable.
After the disapearance of Boris LEONTIEFF it was the black hole. We had no possibility to do anything else than a daily sad and hopeless little work.
Internet gave us some hopes, but without any result: Neither the Confédération des SPA de France, nor Vétérinaires sans Frontières, nor the famous Fondation Brigitte Bardot answered our calls for help. In fact, none of the great French associations has been touched by the polynesian situation more than some words of moral support. Far from the eyes, far from the heart ...
The light came again several long weeks after Boris LEONTIEFF death, fortuitously.
One of our members met a tourist spending his holidays on Bora. This tourist was hurted by the health state and the number of Pets he saw there. This tourist was also member of an international volunteers vets association and was looking for a local Pet Protection Association to see how to do to relieve Bora.
It was in 2002. Since, we exchange, quite daily, messages with Internet and it is these messages which allowed the execution of Bora's campaign. This association is The Esther Honey Foundation (EHF), an US non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of animals in the South Pacific by providing affordable veterinary services, including spays and neuterings. The foundation recruits veterinary professionnals to volunter at project sites in the South Pacific which include the EHF Animal clinic in the Cook Islands where volunteers have treated over 12,000 animals and spayed and neutered 5,000. Volunteers pay their own airfares to travel to designated sites and work full time in challenging conditions (often in the middle of the rain season).
It is the support of this association which allowed us to set up and manage a project that we went to show to our Agriculture Minister, Mr. Frédéric Riveta. It was by asking him advices to find a possible interested commune that he made an appointment for us with Mr. Gaston TONG SANG, the Bora-Bora mayor. Because this one is also the president of the Communes Association (Syndicat pour la Promotion des Communes, SPC), his involvment in the very first polynesian campaign would prompt, in case of success, other commune mayors to do the same at home.
It is the very strong interest of Bora-Bora's mayor, then his full support and commitment in the project which rendered possible this first mission. The first thing which was done has been a polling by the commune and the SDR staffs. This polling showed that there were to expect between 3 and 4000 Pets on the Island. This estimation was topical to sheddule the number of sterilisations to do. From this polling comes the drugs quantities, the number of needed vets and the total duration of all missions.
All that took two years of preparation. This delay is understandable because for one thing we had no experience of this kind, one other thing we had no inventory of futures allowing to estimate the Pet population on Bora-Bora. We had to learn how to manage supplies problems, from air tickets, accomodations, surgery rooms and its supplies, diaries appointments for Pets and mainly to manage the arrival of foreign volunteers vets having the habit to use drugs and supplies not available in the European Union Customs Area.
There is no vet in Fenua Animalia. To transform a non-european drugs list in a compatible list could not be done by vets having never practicised in this area. The translation would have to be done by local vets, private or not. The necessary drugs and supplies list was delivered to us several months before the campaign. Its translation had to be done by the SDR vets, under the command of their minister. When we realised that these vets were obstructive too we had no time to set up donation systems. The only remaining solution was to buy it all through Bora-Bora's private vet.
It is, thus, due to the stupid opposition of the local private vets trust from Tahiti Island and to their corrupting lobbyings that we had to pay such a bill. It could have been greatly lightened without their (auto)destructive attitude (see Men Against).
We thank, by the way, the little help given by Mr. Allain BOUGRAIN-DUBOURG, president of the Ligue de Protection des Oiseaux (Bird Protection League) and member of the Administration Council of the Fondation Brigitte Bardot who, by his intervention at the National Assembly with a Territory representative warned him, in December 2003, on our drugs problem and shown so that great French associations are not all indifferent towards Polynesia.
A Sterilisation Campaign have no chance to be efficient if it doesn't follow the "70% law":
There is to treat between 70 and 80% of the Pet population in less than two reproduction cycles, let say one year and a half, to have a beginning of visible efficiency. To remain under, it is to create a situation similar to the one of the systematic massacres: It stimulates the escaped fertility and, thus, overpopulation. To go further (85, 90, 95%) stabilize results for longer, but it is very hard to reach.
To sterilize less would be awfully useless. Those remaining fertile will adapt their births to restore and even overcome after a time, the old overpopulation level (which is yet intolerable). Parasites and diseases which goes with will spread only better than before. Useless to talk about abandons, even less about the impact on the environnment.
The first mission of Bora-Bora's Campaign was one month long, effective from February 19th to March 17th 2004, and treated only 20% of the global population. It is obvious that the "men against gang" will do its best to stop things here. Then, it will be so easy to shoulder us the responsibility of the fail telling that the method is inaccurate and inefficient: We step into a process which must be completed to give its positive results, otherwise it is the risk of a dreadful catastrophe, worse than before.
We manipulate Life: The danger is actually true!
Bora-Bora was a little promising beginning, but for now it is only a little beginning. That's all.
We are only in the first mission of the first Sterilization Campaign in Polynesia, mission supposed to treat 4 to 600 of the 4,000 Pets of this Island far from Tahiti's international airport. We sterilised about thirty Pets a day in average.
It is a feasibility test The experience that we acquired will be used to facilitate further missions which will allow to treat the whole country, actually. Then, there will be to make a little following which consist in pinpointing new incommers and to sterilise them immediately. This following can be done only with the involvment of commune staff and population (detection of the new incommers, return after treatment) and above all on local private veterinarians (identification, operation, post-surgery following). This can't be done for free, but it is a light job in comparison with the campaign itself.
Key points of the string needing a veterinarian are the following:
Veterinarians divide up according to these workplaces but can change at any time, for circumstantial reasons.
The process is simple, but 30 each day with 6 practicians in average is a rythm which is "not exactly" the one of holidays. More, each veterinarian involved don't stay inevitably for the whole mission and have to adapt quickly.
There is no discrimination other than on owners incomes: Those having obviously the means to pay a sterilisation have no priority, They come after those with few income who come after stray animals. The aim of the campaign is to reach more than 70% of Pets. Rich people are rarely owning many non-sterilized Pets. It is impossible to forbid them the access to free sterilization, as it is impossible to forbid them to go to charities to get food, where yet they don't run.
It will be the time of statements:
Then, we still consider other campaigns on other Islands with confidence. At most, can we hope a better support from the greatest european associations?
Anyway, the initiative of a campaign remains always in the hands of the mayor. To start the process in his commune the expressed support of his voters can only help him to make the first step...