I am in line for the Killbox. I am standing with the Others who love me, and whom I love. We are living beings. We have lives. Goals. Culture. We like shelter and good food. We like the sun on our brow. We like the clean crisp air of the morning. But today we are being driven toward the place. We know what is coming. We are terrified. We are sad. We tremble and our bodies start to shake. Tears come. Our legs nearly give out to escape this vile place. This Nazi place. This black evil place. We are pushed there harder – quickly. I can smell death. I don’t want to die in this place. Yet they make me go there, closer. Then it is my turn. This is wrong. It is illogical. It is the place of abject poverty. It is the place of shame. This is the place of the humans.
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The comment period is coming to an end on a series of changes to the Endangered Species Act today. These changes have been portrayed as a way of giving industry “incentives” to protect wildlife. This is a roundabout way of saying that important regulations to protect wildlife will be removed to make way for industry. The argument for the changes revolve around the idea that since species are still endangered, the act isn’t working. This is like saying that we should remove social welfare because people are still poor.
The Endangered Species Act doesn’t protect all animals, but it has protected 99 percent of the animals it covers from extinction. It’s imperative for animals that we see through the deceitful arguments of the “regulation-shy.” These are nothing more than a veil for shifting the focus of conservation towards human interests and away from animal interests. The changes will:
– Remove protection from threatened species, if they are not officially endangered, allowing them to be hunted and trapped
– Exclude scientists from federal findings
– Change language to make it less clear-cut that species’ interests should trump economic ones
What is most outrageous is that these actions have been portrayed as reasonable. Handing power to business owners and vested economic interests is a recipe for disaster. What will it take for human beings to learn that a superior force will always harm the vulnerable if left unchecked? This is not an abstract philosophy, it’s the basic physics of how beings interact. It’s time to refuse this cowardice and shift the weight of our choices towards protecting the vulnerable. Please make your comment today and join the fight to protect endangered species.
Read more:
https://www.missoulacurrent.com/outdoors/2018/09/endangered-species-act-3/
At the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge, there are 285 bird species, as well as a wide variety of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, mussels, snails and plants. These species are already vulnerable to pesticides dumped on the 3000 acres of land given over to private commercial agriculture. Since the Fish and Wildlife Service recently decided to allow bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically engineered crops requiring more pesticide use, the refuge and the creatures who inhabit the refuge have become more vulnerable to harm. Conservation groups filed a petition asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to end toxic pesticide use on the refuge. This is to take advantage of federal law’s requirement for the service to evaluate every 10 years whether previously approved economic, rather than conservation uses of the land is appropriate. Uses that aren’t compatible with the purpose of the refuge must be ended.
Is there any way that the use of chemicals known to be disastrous for the environment and the life it supports can be approved? Perhaps, if the service decides to abandon its conscience and its responsibility to these animals, and to people. This is why raising your voice to protect the refuge will draw attention to the issue. Agency decisions have huge consequences, but lately they have been slipped under the public’s radar in a cowardly way. It’s time to hold the Fish and Wildlife Service accountable to the animals it claims to protect.
This week, a chance to vote on a bill to ban the live sheep trade fell flat in the Australian House of Representatives. It had passed the Senate and had wide support among Australian politicians across both sides of the aisle. It failed because two politicians refused to “cross the floor” and take a stand to support the bill. Earlier this year, video footage exposed the horror of the live sheep trade, showing sheep packed together, afflicted from the heat and dying on the long voyage north to the Middle East. An Australian Green politician has rightly said the live sheep trade is “simply incompatible with animal welfare.” It just won’t do to slightly improve conditions, as the Liberal party have suggested, by increasing space and ventilation. Travel will still be hard on the animals, and exporters will likely cut corners to save money on power etc.
Australian politicians have made this ban political by choosing to treat it as a partisan issue. The Liberals don’t want to vote with the opposition party because the opposition have made this a policy issue for the next election. If politicians prefer to be political rather than vote for animal welfare, that is their choice. It now represents an opportunity – an opportunity for Australians to put pressure on their politicians to end this trade, or suffer in the next election. It can also be an opportunity to take more comprehensive action to protect animals. No one is even talking about live exports of other animals, such as cattle. Please read more, sign and share, and if you’re an Australian voter, contact your representatives!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/10/live-exports-ban-coalition-pressured-to-allow-lower-house-vote-after-bill-passes-senate
https://secure.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/live-export-shipboard-cruelty/?r=5b9a9f999e7521536860057&ua_s=e-mail#action
A heartbreaking story about an orca whale who mourned her dead calf has the public thinking about Lolita, the captive orca whale again.
And as Lolita reaches retirement, this time it could really make a difference – not only to her, but to her endangered family as well.
Protests have come and gone after years of campaigning to free the lonely orca who occupies a tank that is much too small for her. Lolita lost her mate several years ago and spends much of the time floating, in a listless trance.
What inspired the wake-up call this time was a story about a Southern Resident Killer Whale from Lolita’s orca whale clan. The female whale, called Tahlequah, carried her dead calf with her for 17 days across hundreds of miles, refusing to let go. Some believe this was a deliberate act of mourning, like a funeral. The story has made an impression on how people think about the emotional ties between orcas. This is important for Lolita as there are doubts over whether she will be reunited with her family when she retires, who she hasn’t seen for 47 years. Lolita still sings the songs of her Pod. At 50 years old she has spent most of her life in captivity.
Thinking about Lolita in the context of her family is really important, even if Lolita is never reunited with them. Lolita comes from a population of whales called the Southern Resident Killer Whales. After a brutal roundup in the 70s, baby whales, including Lolita, were separated from their distraught parents and taken to various entertainment parks around the country. Orca whale society is matrilineal and orca whales stay with their mothers their whole lives. Lolita has been in captivity a very long time, so there are questions over whether she would reintegrate successfully with her family, and genuine concerns about her carrying a pathogen that would harm her family. On the other hand, the closeness and deep emotional ties of orca whale society make it heartbreaking that Lolita would never return home.
Thinking about what home means for a captive whale like Lolita means we can’t ignore the fact that Lolita’s family is under threat. We as humans owe a debt to this animal population and culture, that we have stressed, threatened and dispersed. After the Southern Resident Killer Whale population were terrorized and brutalized in the 70s, their population never recovered, and their endangered species designation doesn’t do enough to protect them. It has done nothing to maintain a food source for them, for one. These whales are literally starving due to a lack of their natural food, the Chinook salmon (which is also endangered). A system of dams keeps the orcas from their food. Orca whales have been giving birth to calves who don’t survive, and all pregnancies in the last three years have failed. This doesn’t even take into account pollution and disruption from boat traffic. There are proposals to free up food sources at some of the dams, but these are moving too slowly.
We must act now to protect Lolita’s family, and to ask that genuine efforts are made to return her home where she belongs. Lolita’s freedom and our attention on this issue is nothing less than an act of atonement.
Please read, share/sign and donate.
Read More:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/free-lolita-the-killer-whale/
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article185517463.html
https://www.care2.com/causes/grieving-mother-orca-carried-her-dead-calf-for-17-days.html
Ghetto Rescue took one last video of Valerie the pitbull before she died, and it is heartbreaking. A blue-grey pitbull with a beautiful lustrous coat, she’s lying on the ground being reassured by the humans around her, as the life is ebbing out of her.
Ghetto Rescue found Valerie in South Los Angeles after she was dumped out of a car. They claim she was sexually assaulted, although her death seems to have been the result of trauma to her chest. The LAPD are investigating the case for bestiality and animal cruelty, and treating the sexual assault just as if it was a human rape (testing for DNA). The difference is however, that the rape is considered “bestiality” and is a misdemeanor rather than felony.
It’s reassuring to hear reports of the police going about their business in a thorough way, just as if Valerie was a human. The police started the investigation based on the posts of Ghetto Rescue. Still, Valerie’s abuse will have to be treated within the capacity of the law, which might not be enough to hold her abusers accountable. The sad thing is that this beautiful pitbull lost her life even though she was a shelter animal. Her chance for a new life ended tragically. Animals like Valerie are vulnerable to abuse, and protecting them ends up being a band-aid once they are seriously injured or traumatized. Rather than comforting them when they are dying, we need to take steps to protect them in life.
This last week, the world has been in mourning for Koko the beloved mountain gorilla who learned to speak in American sign language. Koko was born on the 4th of July 1971, hence her name “Fireworks-child” (in Japanese), shortened to “Koko.” This fireworks child was a prodigy – she learned to play the recorder, and to sign over 1,000 signs and understand 2,000 words of spoken English. Koko was sad when she lost a pet, spoke about her longing for a child (the pet kitten was a close substitute) and talked about death and her own death. She also played with words and mixed them up in new combinations. She once described herself as a “fine-gorilla-person.”
Did humans teach Koko about language, or did Koko teach humans? Koko could speak in sign language,
but also more importantly, she could listen. When she listened, she interpreted things in her own way.
Despite criticism of the Koko project (which stated that Koko was mimicking her trainers), Koko
responded in unexpected ways. When she was asked where gorillas go to when they die, she said
“comfortable-hole-bye.” There were a few occasions when she expressed deep sadness and grief, like
when her pet kitten was hit by a car and killed.
Language is often used as an excuse to elevate humans above other animals. There were scientists who
felt Koko’s use of language was meaningless, as she didn’t learn grammar and syntax. But throughout
her life, Koko used sign language not as a lifeless toy or tool to get food and water, but a way to
communicate and describe her world. Communication –- rather than language –- was the key. Koko
and her researchers built a rapport together, where words could mean more than the dictionary
definition, they could mean complex emotional states and refer to shared understanding between
Koko and the researchers. Above all, what Koko taught us is that language is a human invention, but
communication is common to all animals. For that, we owe a debt to Koko, our Gorilla teacher.
Because of a legal loophole, Japanese whalers can still kill large numbers of whales in the Antarctic every year, and this year, many pregnant and young whales were amongst the dead. Japan justifies these expeditions for scientific research, but their reasons are shaky.
For a start, the International Whaling Committee banned commercial whaling in 1985, and most countries, if not all, complied. A 1946 law that says whaling can still take place for scientific reasons is used as a justification for Japan’s expeditions. The whales on these expeditions can be sold for meat, leading to accusations that the scientific explanation is a convenient excuse. The scientific research is apparently undertaken to discover such factors as sexual maturity, nutritional condition and prey consumption of the whales. However critics have said this can be done by taking a biopsy instead. As well as claiming whale-hunting is done for scientific research, Japan has also defended its ancient “culture” of whaling.
122 pregnant whales and 114 juvenile whales died in this massacre. 333 whales in total were killed on this expedition. How did they die? By harpooning, ie using harpoons loaded with a 30g penthrite grenade.
Rather than terrorizing their population and using a violent method of killing them, Japanese whalers could find a more humane way of studying them, but they choose not to. Cultural inertia towards animals needs a wake-up call. Around the world, people are realizing that we don’t have to accept a cultural narrative about dominating and harming animals. It’s time to put pressure on the defenders of “cultural” cruelty to animals.
More info on this story:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12061465
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44307396
https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/japan-whaling-kills-122-pregnant-whales-for-research/news-story/a1851aeec523563c79d593df7085e61b
If ever there was an obvious target for animal rights activists, the Yulin Dog Festival is it. The festival is a display of barbaric cruelty, with dogs and cats kept in cages (some stolen pets), and tortured to “improve” the taste of the meat. This is a cause that has drawn an immense level of public outcry, especially in the West. These voices (including the late Carrie Fisher and Ricky Gervais) are strident in criticizing the festival for its pure cruelty and senselessness. Of course, this criticism is right: boiling and skinning live animals is intensely cruel and violent. Still, Western critics in particular give local supporters of the festival a rallying cry by being “concerned” members of a public that happily kills and eats other kinds of animals. The shock value of the festival to Westerners can be disingenuous – when the shock of the festival lies in the type of animals that are killed – cats and dogs, rather than that they are barbarically killed. The fact that some of these animals are stray pets is an awful tragedy. But activism against animal cruelty needs to rest on more than disapproval of killing cats and dogs. It needs to stop inhumane killing, find an alternative to cultural practices that glorify bloodshed, and ultimately, end the widespread practice of eating meat. Eating a “bloody steak” or burger exists on the same spectrum that the Yulin Dog Festival does – a totally artificial belief that violence somehow makes our food more life-giving. Locals feel offended that Westerners fail to understand how the poverty of the region apparently contributes to the dogmeat industry.
Without making excuses for the festival, it might be possible to use it as a rallying point to do more in your animal rights activism. If you protest the festival because of the killing of family pets, but eat meat, consider that all life is precious and think about reducing or cutting out your meat consumption. If you protest the festival and have no interest in supporting human or workers’ rights in your home country or abroad, consider whether you are contributing to a problem where violent and impoverished lives form people capable of doing violence to animals. If violence can teach us anything it is that all life is connected. The chain in which people do violence to each other and animals can also become a chain of understanding, care and support if actions are taken that are mindful, peaceful and connected.
To protest the Yulin Dog Festival, read, share and sign the petition – and commit to a non-violent lifestyle!
Further Reading:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/968244/yulin-dog-meat-festival-Peter-Li-days-numbered
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yulin-dog-meat-festival-china-animal-rights-chinese-culture-western-interference-a7800416.html
Our world will only change if YOU change your behavior everyday. Most people unwittingly participate in a cycle of violence, hate, and torture everyday, through complacence and self-deception. Just because you are a good friend, father, spouse and worker does not make you a fully individualized, autonomous, moral, and responsible human being. That is the deception of a rights-based approach to duty and the kind of egocentric, competitive self-structure that animates it. To change this world, you MUST seek out violence and change it. You MUST seek out suffering and heal it. You MUST terminate your complacency, and a law-based platform for your moral life. You must dig deeper, and commit to a covenant that protects all life through new conceptions of responsibility and solidarity. You must hold yourself more accountable than anyone else, and most accountable of all. It is only in this way that we can overcome the violence and the deception of our current human anthropology. We can do better, but it rests on your commitment to change yourself. Contact me if you want to talk about it. The Non-Violent Life Project. ~ KCB
Kevin Boileau
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