Animals And Land Mines Associated Press By GRANT PECK May 7, 2000 BANGKOK- The protesters of the 1960s who proclaimed that "war is unhealthy for children and other living things" didn't know the half of it. It took an unlucky 38-year-old elephant to remind the world that war's most persistent legacy -- millions of land mines scattered and forgotten -- also menaces the animal kingdom. When Motola the logging elephant lost a foot to a land mine on the Thai-Myanmar border last August, it made headlines -- but only because her trainer took her to a special elephant hospital in northern Thailand. Countless other hapless, smaller beasts die unremarked in the wild. Land mines have become almost synonymous with modern warfare. There are an estimated 110 million of the life-threatening traps buried in 64 countries around the world. About 25,000 people are injured or killed every year by mines, and studies suggest the toll on animals is 10 to 20 times as high. Removal is a slow and expensive process. Typically, the biggest concentrations of mines are found in countries with the least amount of resources to deal with them -- places like Cambodia and Afghanistan. "From a human perspective, if your herds are being decimated or your pack animals killed, your livelihood is threatened," said Kevin Stewart, an animal rights activist in Edmonton, Alberta. "But more importantly, the animals have as much right not to be randomly blown up as humans." Since the wealth of rural households is often vested in domestic animals and livestock, the issue of animal casualties is not just sentimental. It is well documented that land forced to remain fallow because of mines causes significant drops in agricultural production and farmers' incomes. The loss of animals often affects the same farmers, worsening their economic plight. A study of Bosnia, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Mozambique published in 1995 found that the 32,904 households surveyed lost a total of 54,554 animals at an average cash equivalent loss of $200 to each household. That's the average annual income in some countries. "Removing land mines in general is about keeping the land free for anyone to roam on," said singer Sheryl Crow, who recently toured Vietnam and Cambodia to boost awareness of the land mine problem. "Animals especially need to be helped, because they don't have a voice of their own." Wild animals, including endangered species, probably have it worse, although no major systematic studies have been done on the question, Stewart said. Veterinarian Alojzije Frkovic, who studied the effects of the 1991-95 war in Croatia on domesticated and wild animals, found that at least 57 of an estimated population of 400 European brown bears died from war-related causes, a quarter of them from land mines or artillery fire. "Three-legged bears are still seen around," one of his colleagues, Djuro Huber, told The Associated Press. In most places, the issue of animal casualties surfaces only in the occasional news story, such as reports that mines on the India- China border are killing endangered animals like the Tibetan gazelle, Tibetan wild ass, blue sheep, alpine musk deer and the snow leopard. Eastern and southern Africa, home to some of the world's most spectacular wildlife, have seen animal populations devastated by several rounds of brutal human conflict. Only recently have South Africa and Zimbabwe begun to cope with the land mines left over from liberation struggles of the 1970s and '80s. Large-scale clearance of mines began just in 1997-98 at the well- known Zimbabwean tourist destination of Victoria Falls, where dozens of people have been killed. Elephants have been land mine victims in Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe, which suffered bitter civil wars. In Asia, Sri Lanka's long-running civil war has claimed as many as 20 elephants a year from land mine blasts. The ethnic conflicts that embroiled Uganda and Rwanda last decade started a new open season on central Africa's wildlife. Many of the gentle "gorillas in the mist" made famous by the late Dian Fossey were caught in the fighting. One mine victim known well to naturalists was Mkono, a male silver-backed gorilla from the Great Lakes area of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo. The area, covering about 150 square miles, is home to about half of the 650 mountain gorillas left in the world. Mkono died in northwestern Rwanda in November 1994. He was 20 years old, and had already lost a hand to a poacher's snare. Stewart's World Wide Web project of land mines and animals is named after him. Other wildlife suffered in the wars' aftermath, becoming victims of poachers able to operate freely in the climate of lawlessness that accompanied the breakdown of society. In Southeast Asia, a similar breakdown of authority in Cambodia -- slow to recover from more than two decades of armed conflict -- has allowed poachers free rein. Last year, it was reported that they were using mines to kill tigers. The crude homemade mines used in tiger traps in a vast wildlife sanctuary led park rangers to conclude that soldiers trained in guerrilla warfare were doing the hunting. "Most are former government military and ex-Khmer Rouge fighters," said Chay Samith of Cambodia's environment ministry. The soldiers hunted the cats to sell their bones to make traditional Asian medicines, he said. Tiger skins also fetch a high price in the illegal wildlife trade. Other animals also have become the deliberate targets of land mines, although for less greedy reasons. There have been reports from several areas that livestock were driven across fields as a low- tech method of clearing mines. Sheep were reportedly used during the Iran-Iraq war and in Bosnia; pigs in El Salvador; and cattle in Zimbabwe. Some animal rights activists deplore the use of dogs to sniff out mines, because of the chance for accidents. At least one German shepherd died in mine-clearance operations in Bosnia, in an explosion that also killed his handler.