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In autumn 2011, Seido Watanabe, a veterinarian in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, put up a poster on the front door of his animal hospital. It said, “Don’t hurt our feelings any more.”
When he dropped in his hospital after being away for a while due to being in the evacuation zone from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Watanabe found the glass front door broken and food for the dogs and cats scattered about. He thought volunteers purporting to work for the animals' welfare had done that.
Watanabe himself risked his own safety to return to the hospital eight days after the nuclear crisis broke out at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
He had at that time managed to rescue 16 cats and dogs, although five others had died. However, on this visit, there were no longer any animals in the hospital. Why did they--whoever they might be--have to do such a thing, he thought to himself. He felt deep anger with no one to vent it on.
In the wake of the nuclear disaster, more than 60 individuals and groups launched efforts to rescue and protect pets in the evacuation zone around the nuclear power plant.
More than 1,500 dogs and cats were taken into custody during the first six months, according to an estimate by Shoko Fukuda, 43, the manager of a website to help search for missing pets.
Since entry into the no-go zone for the reason of protecting pets was not allowed, most animal welfare volunteers went into the zone through mountain paths where there were no police barricades or by obtaining permission from municipal governments for fictitious reasons.
Some pet rescuers got into trouble with the local communities. Some residents complained to the prefectural and municipal governments that volunteers had cut off the collars of their dogs and taken them away without telling the owners where their pets would be kept for protection.
Others griped that the pet food scattered by animal rescuers within the premises of their houses attracted raccoons, dogs and cows into the premises, causing them a lot of problems.
There were a large number of burglaries of empty houses in the deserted areas, and local residents suspected that these crimes had been committed by some of the volunteers.
As a result, the municipal governments stopped issuing permits for volunteers to enter the zone.
On the other hand, as winter approached, the Environment Ministry received an increasing number of requests for using volunteers to save pets. The ministry was urged to take effective action by people who were concerned that the animals would freeze to death unless the pace of seizing them was significantly speeded up.
In response to such requests and prodding by citizens, the ministry made a move to seek the assistance of private-sector groups dedicated to the protection of animals.
After obtaining approval from the government’s on-site headquarters to deal with the nuclear crisis, the ministry gave 16 such groups permission to enter the off-limits zone for the protection of animals for the first time. The groups were allowed to enter the zone from Dec. 7 to Dec. 27, 2011, under certain conditions.
The restrictions required the groups to keep and take care of the animals they had seized and prohibited them from bringing into the zone any tools or equipment not necessary for protecting pets. The groups were also required to refrain from any activities that could disturb the public order.
The ministry’s move proved very successful and produced amazing results. While the animal rescue teams of the prefectural government could capture only one or two animals per day, the 16 groups managed to take 34 dogs and 298 cats into custody during the three-week period.
But there was no second time. The government didn’t allow such volunteer groups into the zone again.
When video footage of the activities of one of the groups allowed to enter the zone was broadcast in a TV program, the ministry decided that the group had broken the promises.
“We couldn’t overlook the violation because of the feelings of local residents who couldn’t return home even though they wanted to,” says Koji Okura, an official at the Environment Ministry’s Animal Welfare and Management Office.
Thus ended cooperation between the government and private-sector groups for the rescue and protection of pets left in the no-go zone.
Now, volunteers had no choice but to sneak into the zone without permission from the authorities.
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