Fashion with a passion for wildlife

Protecting wildlife and animals has now become a global issue. With fast paced development all over the world, including Sri Lanka, it is of great concern but also a difficult issue to control. Awareness is a big necessity and of course as with everything else funding is most essential.

In a conversation with Otara about her well known programme with stray dogs, I was enlightened on what Embark does. There is an old saying “Dog is a man’s best friend.” But lots do not adhere towards it. Many treat their pet dogs very badly. After the novelty of having a pet, people get fed up with the process of loving and looking after them with care; many are abandoned on the streets and are left in the open and reproduction begins.

Embark is relentless in their multi-faceted efforts of adoption and re-homing, sterilisation and vaccination, saving the injured, conducting education and awareness programmes and igniting change in the lives of street dogs throughout the island. In addition to the direct benefits to the dog, the indirect benefits to society are immense.

Embark strongly believes that it is important that both animals and people are treated in the same manner.

Many Municipal Councils and government organisations also have efficient animal welfare and protection programmes and there are organisations from overseas such as the Bridgette Bardot & Bosmosa Foundations who encourage doing more good work with animals, especially dogs in Sri Lanka.

Embark has mobile units travelling from village to village conducting education and awareness, sterilisation, vaccination and adoption programmes. Having a clothes line branded Embark helps this organisation to raise more finances towards this worthy programme.

The elephant, wild boar and sambhur are amongst many animals that need protection. The biggest problem facing them is hakka-patas, not widely used by farmers but by a few people who have the know-how to assemble them. Often such people are hunters who provide illegal bush meat to the market. Hakka-patas is mostly used outside protected areas and usually around the periphery of villages and cultivations. Snares are much more widely used than hakka-patas and target deer, wild boar and porcupines for the bush meat trade. However they often cause injury to elephants and cattle.

Otara says there is much more to do for the protection of animals. “There are many other organisations that also run programmes that are very good,” she says, “but if people were to care and love pets and all the wild life out there, much of this problem would be solved.”

Source – life.dailymirror.lk