Armenia may not have a sea, but the Yerevan city government was once proud to say that, like “many developed cities in the world,” it did have a dolphinarium. Not any more. To the cheers (and jeers) of environmentalists, the Ukrainian company that ran the controversial facility has decided to set sail for fresh waters.
The 900-visitor dolphinarium, one of three in the South Caucasus (Baku and Batumi also have dolphin tanks), was built in 2010 in a downtown Yerevan park at about the same speed with which it is now being dismantled. The facility’s senior management cite the end of their “period of operations” as the reason for the decision to pull out.
“The animals have been moved to Ukraine; the performances are over since the period of operation has expired,” Nemo Dolphinarium Director Lili Sahakian told EurasiaNet.org. “This is the only reason.”
But environmental activists claim the real reason is entirely different.
“How could the dolphins survive in Armenia, which has no sea? Could they bear the extremely chlorinated water of the pool, the endless performances, or the frozen fish they were fed?” asked Silva Adamian, chairperson of the Bird Lovers’ Center, a non-governmental organization which heads an alliance of 50 NGOs which opposed the dolphinarium’s opening.
“Back in 2010, we talked to international specialists and they said the animals won’t last even two years. So, we now have what we have.”
It’s a wolf-eat-dog situation in the southern Armenian mountain town of Sisian, which has become the epicenter of a gray invasion. Residents now avoid nighttime strolls to avoid encounters with hungry wolves roaming the streets. The animals have been driven out from nearby forests by heavy snow that blanketed the mountains with up to three meters of the white stuff.
The invaders, emboldened by hunger and an unusually harsh winter, reportedly are raiding the town and nearby villages, snatching up dozens of pet dogs, killing livestock and attacking humans.
In another neighbor, Georgia, the government’s wolf policy is diametrically opposed to that in Armenia. Both countries liberalized wolf hunting rules to help the population deal with increased attacks, but if in Armenia the state pays people to kill the predators, in Georgia hunters need to pay the state 100 laris (about $60.27) for a license to kill the animals.
Almost simultaneously, Armenia and Georgia have decided to rethink the ways of keeping themselves nice and tidy. Both countries' waste-management initiatives differ broadly, but have one common denominator -- both are likely to increase municipal cleaning fees.
The Armenian version, which allows local authorities to double the current cleaning rate to 400 drams (about $1.07) per family member, took flack from opposition lawmakers. Critics charge that linking the rate to the number of family members fails to reflect socio-economic differences in income and in rates of waste-generation.
“Five or six residents may be registered to reside in the castles of oligarchs, but the leftovers from [their] daily parties are clearly not comparable to the amount of garbage thrown out by an economically vulnerable family,” argued Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutiun parliamentarian Arfik Minasian, Regnum.ru reported.
Another MP, Victor Dalakian, an independent, struck an even more populist note, saying that the Armenian government should concern itself more with an economic situation that has led to "a struggle between dogs and people" as they scavenge through waste, a practice in both Armenia and Georgia.
