thedrifter
03-14-08, 05:28 AM
Baghdad Zoo peers into N.C. veterinary class
Video link to experts is a first
By Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - Thousands of North Carolina-based soldiers and Marines are trying to make things as normal as possible for Iraq's people. North Carolina-based veterinarians are trying to ensure that for some animals in that embattled country, life is a zoo.
Veterinarians, students and animal researchers across the state are leading the effort to help the Baghdad Zoo -- once the Middle East's largest -- return to its pre-war glory days. The latest step is a satellite video connection between a classroom at the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine and an office at the Baghdad Zoo. There are simultaneous hookups to specialists in as many as four other North Carolina locations.
When they all flipped the switches Thursday afternoon, the intercontinental conference came fully to life.
"This is a historic first," Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf said, as the picture on the flat-screen monitor in her Raleigh classroom split four ways and the face of a doctor in Baghdad came into focus in one corner.
It was 4 p.m. for Kennedy-Stoskopf's students in her class "Advanced Topics in Zoological Medicine." It was midnight in Baghdad, but Dr. Haider Rasheed, one of a dozen vets at the zoo, looked alert and ready. Some colleagues planned to join him, Rasheed wrote in an e-mail message, but the city was in the middle of a sandstorm and the others couldn't make it.
That was just one of the difficulties Kennedy-Stoskopf, her husband, fellow vet-school professor Michael Stoskopf, and others working on the project have faced in recent months as they tried to offer the vet school's expertise via digital house call.
The video connection evolved from an earlier effort by the N.C. Zoological Park to bring the Baghdad Zoo back from the brink of destruction.
Stripped nearly bare
In better times, the Baghdad Zoo had more than 500 animals, including giraffes, elephants and exotic birds. But its location, inside Zawra Park in the city's center, put it in the middle of heavy fighting between invading U.S. troops and Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. U.S. shells damaged the compound and inadvertently freed some animals; looting that followed the fall of Baghdad stripped away everything else.
"Once the troops took over Baghdad, most of the cultural institutions were ransacked and pretty well anything of value was taken [by looters]," said David Jones, director of the N.C. Zoo. "That included everything from wire and caging and locks and buckets and hose pipes to whatever animals were still there. We think a lot of animals were killed, and probably whatever was edible was eaten, and a lot of animals were sort of wandering around for a while. And, of course, the zoo staff had gone out of the way of any risk. So, the zoo was a right old mess."
Less love for Baghdad
Jones' staff and their associates with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums had recent experience in rebuilding a zoo. They helped raise about a half-million dollars for the zoo in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the U.S. military hunted Taliban forces in that country following Sept. 11, 2001. It helped, Jones said, that the Kabul zoo had a blind, ancient lion whose pitiable plight generated sympathy -- and contributions -- from animal lovers around the world.
The Baghdad Zoo had no such animal celebrity, and organizers were able to raise only about $100,000 for that zoo, a smaller but still useful sum, Jones said, for a facility that needed just about everything.
Zoo within a zone
The U.S. established a Green Zone in Baghdad that included Zawra Park. Soldiers from the U.S. Army civil affairs were given oversight of the zoo. Cages and pens were rebuilt, and some animals were brought in. Last year, the N.C. Zoological Society raised money to buy computers to send to the zoo and got help from the military in getting an Internet connection. Eventually, zoo staff could use the connection to ask advice on how to treat the animals in their care.
While still not up to the standards of most zoos in the United States, the Baghdad Zoo is now an oasis for Iraqis, who stroll with babies amid grass and shade trees. The zoo has lions, camels, monkeys, bears, 23 aquariums' worth of fish, swans, eagles, donkeys, a hyena, a leopard, a fox, a few wolves and dogs.
On Thursday, Rasheed listened from Baghdad along with N.C. State veterinary students to a guest lecture on how to respond to an outbreak of a neurological disease in wild waterfowl. Most days, he and his staff have more immediate concerns, such as how to avoid being targeted by terrorists because of their association with Americans, or how to find enough money to buy food for the animals, and how to keep the generator running when there is no electricity.
The classroom discussion may have seemed a little esoteric, and there was a bit of a language barrier.
But at the end of class, when the instructor asked whether Rasheed had understood what was going on, he smiled into the camera and gave a thumbs up.
(McClatchy special correspondent Hussein Khadim in Baghdad contributed to this report.)
martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8989
McClatchy special correspondent Hussein Khadim in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Ellie
Video link to experts is a first
By Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - Thousands of North Carolina-based soldiers and Marines are trying to make things as normal as possible for Iraq's people. North Carolina-based veterinarians are trying to ensure that for some animals in that embattled country, life is a zoo.
Veterinarians, students and animal researchers across the state are leading the effort to help the Baghdad Zoo -- once the Middle East's largest -- return to its pre-war glory days. The latest step is a satellite video connection between a classroom at the N.C. State University College of Veterinary Medicine and an office at the Baghdad Zoo. There are simultaneous hookups to specialists in as many as four other North Carolina locations.
When they all flipped the switches Thursday afternoon, the intercontinental conference came fully to life.
"This is a historic first," Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf said, as the picture on the flat-screen monitor in her Raleigh classroom split four ways and the face of a doctor in Baghdad came into focus in one corner.
It was 4 p.m. for Kennedy-Stoskopf's students in her class "Advanced Topics in Zoological Medicine." It was midnight in Baghdad, but Dr. Haider Rasheed, one of a dozen vets at the zoo, looked alert and ready. Some colleagues planned to join him, Rasheed wrote in an e-mail message, but the city was in the middle of a sandstorm and the others couldn't make it.
That was just one of the difficulties Kennedy-Stoskopf, her husband, fellow vet-school professor Michael Stoskopf, and others working on the project have faced in recent months as they tried to offer the vet school's expertise via digital house call.
The video connection evolved from an earlier effort by the N.C. Zoological Park to bring the Baghdad Zoo back from the brink of destruction.
Stripped nearly bare
In better times, the Baghdad Zoo had more than 500 animals, including giraffes, elephants and exotic birds. But its location, inside Zawra Park in the city's center, put it in the middle of heavy fighting between invading U.S. troops and Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. U.S. shells damaged the compound and inadvertently freed some animals; looting that followed the fall of Baghdad stripped away everything else.
"Once the troops took over Baghdad, most of the cultural institutions were ransacked and pretty well anything of value was taken [by looters]," said David Jones, director of the N.C. Zoo. "That included everything from wire and caging and locks and buckets and hose pipes to whatever animals were still there. We think a lot of animals were killed, and probably whatever was edible was eaten, and a lot of animals were sort of wandering around for a while. And, of course, the zoo staff had gone out of the way of any risk. So, the zoo was a right old mess."
Less love for Baghdad
Jones' staff and their associates with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums had recent experience in rebuilding a zoo. They helped raise about a half-million dollars for the zoo in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the U.S. military hunted Taliban forces in that country following Sept. 11, 2001. It helped, Jones said, that the Kabul zoo had a blind, ancient lion whose pitiable plight generated sympathy -- and contributions -- from animal lovers around the world.
The Baghdad Zoo had no such animal celebrity, and organizers were able to raise only about $100,000 for that zoo, a smaller but still useful sum, Jones said, for a facility that needed just about everything.
Zoo within a zone
The U.S. established a Green Zone in Baghdad that included Zawra Park. Soldiers from the U.S. Army civil affairs were given oversight of the zoo. Cages and pens were rebuilt, and some animals were brought in. Last year, the N.C. Zoological Society raised money to buy computers to send to the zoo and got help from the military in getting an Internet connection. Eventually, zoo staff could use the connection to ask advice on how to treat the animals in their care.
While still not up to the standards of most zoos in the United States, the Baghdad Zoo is now an oasis for Iraqis, who stroll with babies amid grass and shade trees. The zoo has lions, camels, monkeys, bears, 23 aquariums' worth of fish, swans, eagles, donkeys, a hyena, a leopard, a fox, a few wolves and dogs.
On Thursday, Rasheed listened from Baghdad along with N.C. State veterinary students to a guest lecture on how to respond to an outbreak of a neurological disease in wild waterfowl. Most days, he and his staff have more immediate concerns, such as how to avoid being targeted by terrorists because of their association with Americans, or how to find enough money to buy food for the animals, and how to keep the generator running when there is no electricity.
The classroom discussion may have seemed a little esoteric, and there was a bit of a language barrier.
But at the end of class, when the instructor asked whether Rasheed had understood what was going on, he smiled into the camera and gave a thumbs up.
(McClatchy special correspondent Hussein Khadim in Baghdad contributed to this report.)
martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8989
McClatchy special correspondent Hussein Khadim in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Ellie