Day: June 9, 2024

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MEXICO CITY — Amid Mexico’s heat wave and drought, suffering birds are getting air-conditioning and monkeys with heatstroke are being rescued by non-governmental groups.

The government, meanwhile, has been more preoccupied with cooling down animals at state-run zoos, giving lions frozen meat popsicles. It’s not the only frosty treat: One rescue group is feeding distressed owls with rat carcasses shipped in frozen from Mexico City.

A heat dome, an area of strong high pressure centered over the southern Gulf of Mexico and northern Central America, has blocked clouds from forming and caused extensive sunshine and hot temperatures all across Mexico, as well as in the United States.

Much of the impact on wildlife is being felt in central and southern Mexico, because while temperatures are also high in the north, it is mostly desert and the animals there have some coping mechanisms for extreme heat and drought.

On the steamy Gulf coast, an animal park has set up air-conditioned rooms for eagles, owls and other birds of prey.

In the south, howler monkeys continue to fall dead out of the trees with heatstroke. Deaths now probably number over 250.

In the southern state of Tabasco, the few monkeys that can be saved from dehydration and heat stroke are mostly being saved by NGOs like the Biodiversity Conservation of The Usumacinta group. Known by its initials as COBIUS, the group has saved and stabilized 18 of the monkeys.

Wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo, the head of the group, has been accompanying teams of biologists and veterinarians out into the jungle to look for ailing monkeys.

Many times, they get there too late.

“Yesterday we lost three of the animals,” Pozo said as he bounced in a truck along a rural road in the southern Gulf coast state of Tabasco, the worst-hit area. “We went out to rescue them. We couldn’t stabilize them.”

The monkeys — mid-sized primates known for their roaring calls — were too far gone with a kind of severe fluid loss as Mexico grapples with drought along with heat.

As of May 31, the Environment Department acknowledged that a total of 204 howler monkeys had died, 157 of them in Tabasco. Pozo said the number in Tabasco alone has since risen to 198, suggesting the nationwide toll is now near 250.

“The only rescue plan or program is the one our organization is doing,” Pozo said. Amid budget cuts for many environmental agencies, the government now has to rely on NGOs.

In a statement, the Environment Department said, “Federal environmental authorities have attended to reports of these events, in a coordinated approach with civic groups and academics.” It said the government has provided food, lodging and water for the NGO teams and sick animals.

The department says tests indicate the primates are dying of heat stroke, but adds that the drought has caused a “lack of water in the streams and springs in the areas where the monkeys live” and that appears to also play a role.

Some NGOs are struggling to pay for the care and are calling for donations, like the Selva Teenek, a nonprofit wildlife park in the jungled region of La Huasteca, farther north.

On May 9, temperatures in that area soared to around 50 degrees Celsius, and rescuers and staff brought in 15 birds of various species that were found lying on the ground.

“This had never happened before,” said Laura Rodríguez, the park’s veterinarian. “One hundred percent of the animals … they needed rehydration. Some were so dehydrated we couldn’t give them water orally.”

Ena Mildred Buenfil, leader of the animal rescue group Selva Teneek, said birds — like the howler monkeys — are simply dropping dead.

“The birds started having problems, and some of them literally started dropping dead in flight,” Buenfil said. “Some of the most affected were the newborns … people sent photos to us of dozens of dead parrots on the ground.”

The birds were suffering from heat stress, dehydration and malnutrition, simultaneously. Rescuers had to get them out of the heat, give them water and feed them.

That included a shipment of frozen dead rats from Mexico City. “The adult (owls) need rats. Fortunately, we have rats,” Buenfil said, but noted the staff has to thaw them a bit to skin them and remove their innards before they can be given to the birds.

Since then, dozens of more birds — and a few bats, lynxes and and coyotes — have been found alive but suffering, and have also been brought in to the Teneek park.

The situation got so crowded in the three rooms that have air-conditioning at the park that the staff had to put up sheets or curtains to separate the birds of prey from other birds that are their prey.

Several birds died, but some species — like the kinkajous that roam the park – only need the air-conditioning during the day, and are let out at night. Others, like the ant eaters, can get by with the breeze from a fan.

The lions at Mexico City’s Chapultepec zoo got a frozen treat of blood and animal bones mixed with water. Alberto Olascoaga, the head of the capital’s zoo, said the animals like it — and it helps hydrate them.

“They play with the popsicle. They lick it, they break it up, they bite it, and they are getting refreshed and drinking this cold water as it melts,” Olascoaga said.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the environmental scientist who won the June 2 presidential election to succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador, offered some hope that testy relations over how to deal with the plight of wildlife might change when she takes office October 1.

“I have spent my whole life studying the environment, it is part of my cause,” she wrote in her Instagram account Wednesday.

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I agree with Will Hutton that the essence of socialism is fellowship, and it’s easy to show what that can mean in practice (“Socialism isn’t a dirty word. It’s simply about wanting to make a fairer society”). The NHS is essentially a system of mutual medical aid with state funding, paid for by income tax – the more you earn, the more you contribute – which means it is firmly rooted in the socialist principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. It has been the most popular institution in the country for almost 80 years. People may complain about its performance (largely caused by Tory attempts to dismantle it), but how many of them criticise it for being socialist?

I’d like Labour politicians to pledge to apply the principles of the NHS to other state bodies. And if the Tories and the rightwing press scream that this is socialism, Labour should ask people how bad the socialism of the NHS has been for them.
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Prague, Czech Republic

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Videos of megaphone-wielding lifeguards announcing the news that four hostages had been rescued, sparking the exultant cheers of beachgoers, summed up an “only in Israel” moment on a scorching summer day.

The exuberance — of a kind Israelis have not felt in a long time — was soon tempered by the announcement that Arnon Zamora, a commander of the elite Yamam force who helped lead the rescue, was killed in the operation. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant hailed the father of two as a hero, and Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, the military spokesman, said his tragic death underscored Israelis’ willingness to “risk lives to save lives;” Hagari may be a spokesman, but he spoke the honest truth.

Another solemn factor amid the celebrations: The quartet rescued on Saturday — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv — brought the number of hostages extracted by the military to seven. In comparison, more than 100 were released early on in the war via negotiated deals. With 116 hostages remaining, dozens of whom are presumed dead, negotiation remains the more likely way to achieve their freedom.

Yes, the tactical success of the operation — a raid on the Nuseirat area of central Gaza, which was reportedly planned for many weeks — underscored that Israeli intelligence and special forces can still get the job done, despite the epic breakdowns of Oct. 7. But that success does not change Israel’s fundamental strategic dilemma.

That dilemma has, if anything, grown this past week, as Hamas has appeared increasingly likely to reject the ceasefire proposal President Joe Biden laid out in late May. One reason Hamas may be demurring: The organization is clearly cognizant that Israel will be ready to renew its campaign at the first provocation.

What may be left is for Israel to publicly offer the Hamas leadership in Gaza amnesty and exile, in something of a sort of replay of the 1982 deal that allows Yasser Arafat and his battered Palestinian Liberation Organization to leave Beirut for Tunis — where they remained until the Oslo Accords enabled them to establish an autonomy government in parts of the West Bank and Gaza 12 years later.

If such an offer is what is needed to achieve a ceasefire, Israel must make it. Among the many challenges Israel has faced in this battle is Hamas’ indifference to the lives of Palestinians, whom it deliberately places in harm’s way as its own operatives hide in a massive tunnel network underneath the strip. That pattern held true during Saturday’s raid: It’s significant that the hostages rescued were held in residences, a move that clearly endangered civilians in the surrounding area. Gaza officials claimed on Saturday that more than 200 Palestinians were killed in the rescue, without specifying how many were combatants. To continue to inflict heavy tolls on Palestinian civilians is to play directly into Hamas’ hands.

On one level, the tragedy of this war has been told in numbers — the shocking number of massacre victims on Oct. 7, and the unfathomable amount of death and destruction that has followed in Gaza. 

But human beings are programmed to respond most viscerally to stories about individual people — and that is what brought such intensity to Israelis’ reaction to the rescue, especially since some of the hostages, and their family members in Israel, have become well-known figures.

That was especially the case with Argamani, 26, who was shown in one of the first videos Hamas released after Oct. 7 begging the terrorists “Don’t kill me” as they marched her and her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, toward Gaza. Argamani has since appeared in other propaganda videos, and had become a well-known face among the captives. (Or is still in captivity.) It was Argamani’s story that dominated the news cycle after the hostages’ rescue: Her father celebrated his birthday on the day of her retrieval, and before Saturday was over she had reunited with her mother, originally from China, who is battling terminal brain cancer and has publicly begged to see her daughter again before she passes.

She also received a phone call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said “we didn’t give up on you for a moment” and told her to “get better with your family, and hug your mother as well.” 

Yet as is always the case with Netanyahu, nothing he does remains unsullied by controversy. He was already catching heat Saturday for his speech on the raid, which emphasized his own role, as  he repeatedly declared that he had authorized and approved the raid. That said, a planned announcement by the moderate National Unity party — which many expected to be that they are leaving Netanyahu’s coalition, deepening internal Israeli disarray — was put off by the events.

The day’s drama underscored something fascinating about Israel: a nation that is famously and perhaps hopelessly divided also deeply yearns to be united. For one day at least, that wish appeared to be fulfilled.

The post The hostage rescue brought unity to Israel — and underscored a great paradox about the country appeared first on The Forward.