Have we got news for you.
On the Friday Dec 1st edition of the BBC’s ‘Have I got news
for you’
programme, our tags were featured.
The Missing Headline section’s guest publication this week was Miniature
Donkey Talk. One of the headlines read something along the lines of "How
do you make a donkey glow in the dark' with the answer blacked out. The answer
was 'Fit reflective ear tags'.
Anne Widdecombe MP, the guest quiz mistress, then went on to suggest the
problem is so bad in Namibia that they are considering building a ‘mule
carriageway’.
We think tags are better Ann! 
National Georgaphic
July Edition
Donkeys should be seen and not hurt
Donkeys should be seen and not hurt, says
the group Donkey Welfare of Namibia. It is estimated that
more than a quarter of road accidents in the country involve
collisions with donkeys - often because the dark-coated animals
lie down to sleep on the warm pavement at night. To prevent
such accidents, the group is working with the Namibia government
to outfit donkeys with reflective ear tags. Some 500 donkeys
have been tagged so far.
The Washington Times
7th April 2006
Pin the reflectors on the accident-causing donkeys
Donkeys in Namibia are going to receive a special Easter treat. About 500 of
them will have yellow reflectors attached to their ears to cut down on the
high incidence of car crashes involving donkeys sleeping on the roads at night.
The donkeys, which play a fundamental role in the lives of
Namibian families, are responsible for about one-quarter of all traffic accidents
in the country,
according to the organization Donkey Welfare of Namibia (donkeywelfare.com),
founded by two Britons last year.
The animals' sleeping habits are largely
to blame, said Peter Collingwood, a retired advertising agent and a co-founder
of the group.
"
Donkeys like to lie down on the road at night because the tarmac is warmer
than the earth around them," Mr. Collingwood said, but they are
the same color as the road and often fail to wake up when a car approaches.
Donkey Welfare Namibia has developed the yellow ear tags
to reflect the headlights
of coming vehicles, which will help drivers spot and avoid the donkeys
at night.
Namibia's Motor Vehicle Accident Fund has joined the project
in hopes of reducing the human toll from such accidents, which kill about
90 people
a year,
Mr. Collingwood said. The organizations have set a goal of tagging the first
500
donkeys by Easter.
The country has about 200,000 working and wild
donkeys, most of which are used for plowing, transportation and fetching
water. The death of a donkey
can be financially devastating to its owner.
A South African company has produced
1,000 of the tags at a cost of $6 apiece, permitting the 500 donkeys to
be tagged on both ears. Mr. Collingwood
said his organization is raising funds in hopes of tagging all the donkeys
in Namibia,
and might expand the project to other countries, such as Botswana.
Russell Hay, the other co-founder of Donkey Welfare, had
a personal encounter with a donkey on the road at night.
"
I was able to swerve and miss a donkey on a lonely stretch
of road in northern Namibia. Unfortunately, the truck behind
me was not so lucky and hit the poor
donkey," Mr. Hay said in a press release.
Kelly O'Meara,
program director of the Humane Society International in Washington,
said similar reflectors have been mounted on
the ears of elephants in some
parts of India.
"
If you travel internationally, it's amazing to see people drive their cars
in and out of horses, donkeys, camels, elephants -- you name it," Mrs.
O'Meara said.
" Where you have a large number of animals that
are used by farmers and poor workers for a variety of things, but are walking
the same roadways with increasing
numbers of cars ... collisions are very likely to happen."
View
article on-line here
Tehran Times
19th October 2005
Making donkeys glow in the dark
A British-based donkey welfare group has started a campaign to put reflective
tags on Namibia's donkeys. The idea is to make the animals easier to see at night, and thus to avoid
collisions on main roads.
Donkeys in Namibia and other African countries frequently wander onto the
tarmac at night -- and fail to get out of the way when vehicles approach.
Collisions involving vehicles and donkeys are believed to account for a
quarter of road accidents in Namibia.
Donkey Welfare of Namibia plans to distribute reflective tags to be attached
to donkeys' ears.
"At first we are concentrating on the areas where most collisions with
donkeys occur but we would like to eventually tag all donkeys in the country," Russell
Hay, a founder member of the organization told the Namibian newspaper.
Donkeys tend to wander onto roads as the evening cools down, and the tarmac
retains the heat for longer than the surrounding bush.
There are believed to be at least 150,000 donkeys in the northern Owamboland
region alone. The average northern Namibian household owns five of the animals.
Many other donkeys are strays, and become a serious problem on unfenced
roads.
BBC
Making donkeys glow in the
Dark
One in four traffic accidents involves
donkeys.
A British-based donkey welfare group has started
a campaign to put reflective tags on Namibia's
donkeys. The idea is to make the animals easier to see at night, and thus
to avoid collisions on main roads.
Donkeys in Namibia and other African countries frequently wander
onto the tarmac at night - and fail to get out of the way when vehicles
approach.
Collisions involving vehicles and donkeys are believed to account
for a quarter of road accidents in Namibia.
Donkey Welfare of Namibia plans to distribute reflective tags to
be attached to donkeys' ears.
"At first we are concentrating on the areas where most collisions
with donkeys occur but we would like to eventually tag all donkeys
in the country," Russell Hay, a founder member of the organisation
told the Namibian newspaper.
Donkeys tend to wander onto roads as the evening cools down, and
the tarmac retains the heat for longer than the surrounding bush.
There are believed to be at least 150,000 donkeys in the northern
Owamboland region alone. The average northern Namibian household
owns five of the animals.
Many other donkeys are strays, and become a serious problem on unfenced
roads.
View
article on-line here
The Economist.
8th - 14th
October, 2005.
Namibia. Donkey Business.
A
nice way to protect drivers and
donkeys.
Forget drunken driving. When
cruising along Namibia's long and empty
roads, unsuspecting drivers face a no less dangerous hazard:
sleeping donkeys. At night, the warm tarmac provides a much more
comfortable bed than the vast expanses of land only a few yards
away. Invisible in the dark, the dormant asses, which help plough
Namibia¹s land and pull its carts, have become a cause of many
a car crash, to the dismay of drivers and the police alike. In May,
the head of the president's guard was killed by a donkey.
Russell Hay, a British businessman, is no stranger to asininity.
While living in Namibia, he has twice driven into a donkey. On a
lonely stretch, he swerved to avoid one, only to see it flattened
by a lorry behind him. Earlier this year, he and a friend set up
Donkey Welfare of Namibia. With the Namibian government's blessing,
the British outfit is planning to make donkeys glow in the dark by
attaching reflective tags to their ears.
A pilot scheme is about to be started in two
or three of Namibia¹s
do'key hot spots. If it works, Donkey Welfare is thinking of enrolling
local schools to tag the animals for a small fee and British
animal lovers may be asked to contribute.
Donkey Welfare is also thinking of paying for donkeys and yellow
carts, painted in the fashion of American school buses, to lug children
to school. Namibia's 200,000-odd donkeys should be enough to do the
job.
The Times
8th October
2005 Eeyore love
Good news this week for Namibia's 200,000
donkeys. Hundreds are set to be fitted
with reflective ear tags so that they will
be visible to traffic. The move is an attempt
to save donkey and human lives. At least
90 people die each year in vehicle collisions
with donkeys in Namibia.
The Sunday Times
June 26, 2005
Shining future for glowing donkeys
WHILE boy racers and drink drivers are the scourge of British roads, on the long and empty highways of Namibia it is donkeys that cause most carnage, writes Paul Lamarra.
Although Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated nations on earth, 90 of its people die every year in crashes involving donkeys - usually when the animals fall asleep on warm tarmac roads at night. Now a British firm has come up with a solution to cut the number of deaths on the southern African country’s roads - reflectors for their ears. The reflector scheme, which is backed by the Namibian government, has been devised by a pair of British donkey lovers - Russell Hay, a businessman who has lived in Namibia, and Peter Collingwood, a London advertising executive. “I have hit donkeys and they do a lot of damage - it is a very expensive issue,” said Hay. A charity has been formed to fund the fixing of a fluorescent tag to each ear of most of the country’s 200,000 donkeys. Hay and Collingwood will launch a pilot project in September, when schoolchildren will be paid to tag about 400 donkeys in three of the worst accident blackspots. The 1,250-mile road from the Namibian coast through Botswana to Johannesburg is most affected by sleeping donkeys. Accidents are common in the dry season, when farmers allow the animals to roam free. Donkeys are used to pull carts, fetch water and plough fields. The reflectors, which resemble the identity tags worn by livestock in the UK, will each cost about £1.50 and will be produced by Ritchey Tagg in Masham, North Yorkshire. Fhihalani Ndjaba, the permanent secretary of Namibia’s ministry of works, roads and transport, said: “We have a high level of accidents caused by donkeys at night and a number of deaths have resulted - we think this idea is a good one.”
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