Category: wildlife

Wading Into Murky Waters: The Truth About Duckshooting

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on Wading Into Murky Waters: The Truth About Duckshooting
Duckshooting in New Zealand is a centuries-long activity.   It’s time to bring it to a stop, writes End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle.

 

In a few short days, the pitter-patter of tiny bullets will be heard near wetlands all over New Zealand. The air will be thick with the smell of gunshot, and dead and injured birds will rain on the ground.   In an estimated 25% of cases these birds will not be killed outright, but will suffer an agonising, lingering death. Is this the kind and compassionate New Zealand our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern keeps talking about, or is it government-sanctioned carnage?

The opening of the gamebird season – generally the first weekend of May, but delayed this year because of Covid-19 restrictions – has been part of New Zealand’s history since the early nineteenth century.  Although it is declining in popularity, over 30,000 gamebird hunting licences are still sold in New Zealand annually.

Every year during the weeks-long season, shooters get up before dawn, don camouflage suits and war paint, trek down to lakes, ponds and rivers, and install themselves in hidden huts called maimai, or sit in dingys near reeds, away from the ducks’ keen eyesight.  The first rays of daylight reveal a bucolic scene. Sleeping birds rest their heads gently on their backs, next to their lifelong partners, also sleeping.

Suddenly shots fire out, and the quiet scene become turbulent with panicking family and friends, the air filled with their cries.

Terrified, they take to the sky in an effort to escape, only to be picked off by shooters who fist pump and whoop in delight when they strike their mark. This wetland was the birds’ refuge, and now, cruelly and senselessly, their life is over.

Birds who do not die outright (it takes a good marksman to kill them immediately) may perish in the mouths of retriever dogs, or have their necks wrung by shooters. Many will just lay where they fell, undiscovered, until the life ebbs from them.

There is so much wrong with duck shooting that it is hard to know where to begin, but we could start with sentience.

Ducks are animals, like us.

They know hunger and thirst, heat and cold. Like us, they can feel excitement, joy, and fear, and form attachments to their families and friends.

Their perception of pain is analogous to ours also.  Vets use a combination of opiods, corticosteroids, anti-inflammatories and local anaesthetics to manage the pain of birds.  I have looked after birds as a volunteer for bird rescue organisations, have applied pain relief, and seen the results for myself.   Universally, animals in the wild generally do not show their pain or weaknesses, because it makes them vulnerable.  It is hard by looking at a bird to know if they are in pain, but you can almost immediately see them relax and settle once pain relief is administered.

What about the ethics of shooting ducks?  It is called a ‘sport’, but a sport requires two equally matched parties playing by the same rules.  Duckshooting, and hunting in general,  is hardly  a ‘sport’  ‘Carnage’ is a better word.   And not only ducks are shot.   Protected species are also killed and injured because of incompetent shooters, or those who are deliberately flouting the rules.

It is certainly not heroic either.   For all its macho image, duckshooting  is a cowardly activity. The shooter lurks in a hiding place and employs deceptive techniques such as decoy ducks and hooters to lure his mismatched opponents.  This would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

There is not one compelling reason for shooting ducks.

It goes without saying that we don’t have to kill them for our food.  In fact many shooters don’t bother eating their prey.  While some may dine out on duck for weeks, others simply discard their bodies at the sides of roads and in rubbish dumps, or bury them.

The conservation reason is also a myth.   Contrary to the belief they would “blacken the sky” if left alone to breed,  Nature has her own way of culling. When numbers are low, and the environment can support them, species breed more, and vice versa.  While no one wishes starvation, disease or predation on waterfowl, shooting an animal because he or she might starve or get sick is arbitrary, and in the end, pretty much useless. Professor Richard Kingsford, who directs the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of New South Wales, has been conducting yearly surveys of waterbird populations across eastern Australia for three decades.  New South Wales is one of the Australian states where duckshooting is banned, and Professor Kingsford and his team have not detected an increase in numbers of birds as a result of the ban.   If anything there is a slight decline, but it is due to habitat loss and not hunting.  It is frankly unbelievable to me that shooters kill birds for conservation reasons.    They even cooperate with the government to establish wetlands, so, as the Fish and Game website states, that they can have more ‘fun’ next year.

For the princely sum of $23.00, a parent can buy a child’s season’s pass to kill ducks. A few years ago Fish and Game promoted the season by showing a young boy with a firearm over his shoulder and holding a string of dead ducks.   What traits are we fostering in our children and in our communities by perpetuating the annual duck shooting season? Indifference to suffering? Irreverence towards other forms of life? Cruelty?

Why don’t we recoil from seeing children take up arms and shoot harmless animals?

Why aren’t we modelling kindness and compassion to our children? Why don’t we teach through our own behaviour a respect for all life, and for other species’ natural right to share the planet?

Why as a society would we encourage any activity that serves to dull our compassion and pity?

Are we not aware that violence breeds violence? Is the parallel between killing animals and hurting human beings not clear?

Why can’t our Prime Minister see that?

Duck shooting is the unnecessary taking of life. The only conclusion we can draw for its popularity is that shooters enjoy killing.

Now there’s a thought.

We really are wading into murky waters now.

Sandra Kyle is a full-time animal activist.   She started End Animal Slaughter in 2018, with the goal of closing all slaughterhouses in the western world by 2025.  

We Need To Stop Factory Farming, Say Celebrity Couple

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Closing wet markets will not be enough to prevent pandemics, say Joachin Phoenix and Rooney Mara in a recent opinion editorial. We need to stop factory farming. 

The vegan/animal rights community is lucky to have the high-profile celebs who use their influence to be a voice for animals.

In their Washington Post editorial Phoenix and Mara state that while animal markets such as the one in Wuhan that gave rise to Covid-19 are common in China, they are also found throughout the US, including 80 of them within New York City alone.  The couple state that more commonplace threats to public health are the more than 15,000 CAFOS ‘concentrated animal feeding operations’ (factory farms) scattered throughout the US.  As well as posing environmental threats and risks to human health in the disposal of effluent in their communities, they are hot houses for the proliferation of disease.

A US Pig CAFO

“These factory farms warehouse thousands of animals that wallow in their own waste with limited or no airspace. [This] routinely [creates] conditions for the proliferation of superbugs and zoonotic pathogens…”

 “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have warned us against the risks of factory farms for years…”

“The unsanitary living conditions inside CAFOs weaken animals’ immune systems and increase their susceptibility to infection and disease. The factory farms’ response has been to pump the animals full of antibiotics that make their way into our food supply and onto our dinner plates, systematically fostering in humans a lethal resistance to the medicines that once quelled everyday infections. Such practices have brought humanity to the point that the WHO now estimates that more than half of all human diseases emanate from animals.”

Phoenix and Mara state that we must probe our role in the emergence of a growing number of diseases that have come about as a result of our impositions on the animal kingdom and the environment:

”This probe cannot end with bats, monkeys, pangolins and other exotic wildlife supposedly to blame for recent contagions. It should encompass all of the supporting industries that contribute to the debilitation of communities, our susceptibility to illnesses and our complete defenselessness in their wake. A real public-health reckoning would have us reshape our patterns of consumption, curbing our dependence on animal products. A bacteria-infested (and inhumane) food supply makes people sick.”

Covid 19 has brought about awareness of zoonoses, and the significant health risks they pose for humans, animals, and the planet.  We need to listen to Phoenix and Mara, who urge us to apply the same energy we have put into overcoming the virus to help dismantle the industries that are both so cruel to animals, and a hothouse for future disease outbreaks.

 

 

 

Sandra Kyle is an animal activist, and the owner of the website End Animal Slaughter

 

 

Let the Pangolin’s Scales Fall From Your Eyes

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch writes that our best defence against Covid-19 is to stop abusing animals.  

 

Distinguished American immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci has made a call to ban wildlife markets calling them an unusual human animal interface.

This call is echoed by the United Nations (UN) biodiversity chief who also says we need to ban wildlife markets in China and other countries in order to prevent future pandemics like the SARS Covid-19.

A Chinese Wet Market

These wildlife markets are ideal sites for the emergence of new microbial pathogens like the SARS-coronaviruses that rely on hosts to mutate and spread. The route of transmission of SARS-coronaviruses is from wildlife to humans.

The three zoonotic corona viruses capable of causing severe respiratory infections in humans are SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and COVID-19. SARS-CoV has what scientists call high host plasticity – this means it can be found in a high host range and can mutate to become capable of human to human transmission. This is what we have seen with COVID-19.

The ecology of SARS-coronaviruses is an interesting, convoluted and deadly field. Wading through it left me with two impressions – one was a headache and the other was that it all began with bats. There is a vast amount of academic literature saying that coronaviruses (of which Covid-19 is but one) have naturally evolved and been hosted by bats and birds.

But before you get all hung up on bats don’t blame them. And don’t get your feathers ruffled over birds. A recent research article has suggested that during the mutation of SARS Covid-19, pangolins provided a partial spike gene. The spike gene binds to a receptor on a human cell and thus gains entry – with often deadly consequences.

Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy in China, and its scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine

But don’t blame pangolins either. Let the scales fall from your eyes as to the real driver of virus spill over from animals to humans. A study conducted by the University of California and the University of Melbourne found that the drivers of transmission of zoonotic diseases are humans through the creation of animal-human interfaces.

These occur where animals and humans interact – in animal agriculture, human dwellings, hunting, laboratory research, zoos, and wildlife management and exploitation scenarios. We have used and abused animals to such an extent that we have fostered and enabled the transmission of zoonotic viruses.

       Wet markets are prime sites for the emergence and transmission of zoonotic viruses to humans

These kind of interactions between humans and animals are mostly based on the ideology of human supremacy. Many of us are brought up with the unshakeable belief that there is a hierarchy in nature and that humans sit God-like at the pinnacle. It sure is getting very spiky up there on that mountain top.

Time to climb down.

We need to reframe our thinking, attitude and behaviour toward animals and non-human nature. It is not that animals pose a risk to humans because they are the source of new viruses. It is humans who pose a risk to themselves through the misguided belief that humans are a superior species who can (and should) use animals for their own benefit. That came back to bite us.

And when you think about it, what a convenient narrative it is to blame the animals. We literally invade their world, destroy their habitat, put them in filthy cages, eat them, wear them, use their bodies as living research objects and otherwise exploit them. And somehow it is their fault. That is just batty.

And when you think about it, what a convenient narrative it is to blame the animals. We literally invade their world, destroy their habitat, put them in filthy cages, eat them, wear them, use their bodies as living research objects and otherwise exploit them. And somehow it is their fault. That is just batty.

I want to challenge that narrative and I think we all need to be singing from the same hymn sheet on this. It is not the animals who pose a danger to humans – it is humans themselves. If we left animals and their habitat alone none of this would be happening. It really is quite simple.

Wildlife markets are destructive not only in terms of their potential as places where viruses may jump species. They are also destroyers of biodiversity and places of great cruelty.

China is one of the largest consumers of wild animals for food and medicine in the world. A study by Alex Chow, Szeman Cheung and Peter Yip in the Human – Wildlife Interactions Journal in 2014 found some disturbing facts. This study of wildlife markets from 7 cities in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces found that 97 animal species were sold of which 51% were reptiles (turtles and lizards), 21% were birds and 10% were mammals. Alarmingly, 23% of the reported species were threatened, 12 species endangered and one species critically endangered.

This study also showed that many of the species originated not only in South China but also Indochina (such as the Indochinese box turtle) and Southeast Asia (such as the Burmese Python). Most of the animals were believed to be wild caught because tooth-like wounds (caused by traps) could be seen on their feet.

A significant number of these animals in China have been poached and there is evidence of extensive and expanding networks of illegal international wildlife trading.

Another academic study from 2004 linked the SARS corona virus to the wildlife trade and population growth. It clearly stated that “the underlying roots of newly emergent zoonotic diseases may lie in the parallel biodiversity crisis of massive species loss as a result of overexploitation of wild animal populations and the destruction of their natural habitats by increasing human populations”. They called for a less human-centred approach to our relationship with animals.  Apparently we did not listen and I am rapidly losing faith that we ever will.

We need a less human approach to our relationship with other species

Wherever humans settle they exploit non-human animals for their own gain. And it has now come back to haunt us in the shape of Covid-19. We need to critically look at our relationship with animals and re-imagine it if humans and animals are to have a future on this planet.

So please don’t blame the animals. It’s our fault and we need to do something about it.

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and a Lecturer in Education

COVID-19 – It’s Time To Leave Behind Inhumane Practices For Good

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on COVID-19 – It’s Time To Leave Behind Inhumane Practices For Good

The Chinese government is promoting a bear bile derivative as a cure for Covid 19, without any evidence that it would work.  As a result there could be an upsurge in the demand for bears for this cruel and inhumane treatment.  

The US is proposing The Bear Protection Act, designed to prevent poaching of American bears for bear bile.  The passage of this Act would help stop this extreme form of animal cruelty globally. 

It is time to stop superstitious, archaic practices, and leave them behind for good. 

Read the Animal Wellness article here:

A ‘Most Despicable Form of Schooling’

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In New Zealand, school children are encouraged by teachers and parents to kill wild animals as part of a government-led initiative to eradicate so-called ‘pests’.     

In this article Professor Emeritus Marc Bekoff calls out NZ communities who practice this, pointing out the link between cruelty to animals and violent behaviour in later life:

‘Imprinting kids to kill animals is bad news, can have horrific long-term effects, and should be stopped immediately’.

Read the article here.  

“Readers can find other essays on animal cognition and animal emotions here –

–  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions 

 

 

Conservation – or the Thrill of the Kill?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this article End Animal Slaughter editor Sandra Kyle looks at trophy hunting and suggests that it’s time to lay down the gun and pick up the camera.

 

The National Geographic photo shows a middle-aged man sitting in his trophy room in Delaware, surrounded by taxidermied animals.   Above the large brick fireplace the head of a bull elephant is mounted, its trunk curled out in front, flanked by his enormous tusks.   Below him is a standing giraffe, and another giraffe rests off to the side, his or her long legs curled under their body.  When the trophy hunter shot the animals they would have fallen in a crumpled, bloody heap, but now thanks to a mould mounted under their beautifully preserved skin they have an eerily lifelike appearance.  In the photo we also see a rhino, hyenas, deer, cervals and other animals.  The hunter says hunting is in his blood, and he thinks of himself more as a conservationist and a collector rather than someone who goes out and shoots sentient beings for the thrill of the kill.

Judging by the 100 or more specimens on display, this hunter is undeniably a collector.   But what is the real reason trophy hunters pay tens of thousands of dollars to kill an animal and bring them home to put on their wall?  They may tell you it is for conservation, or to help impoverished local communities, but I suspect that is not the primary motivation.   Trophy hunting may well be about adventure, tradition, camaraderie, but it is also more than that.  Seeing the way hunters of both sexes pose grinning for photos above the corpses of the large – often dangerous – animals whose lives they have just extinguished, I suspect it is much more to do with power, status – and possibly sexual stimulation – than the desire to help human or wild animal populations.

Trophy hunters who pay tens of thousands of dollars for their licence to shoot African animals like to say that picking off certain individuals is an effective conservation tool that can benefit both animals and local communities.  It sounds good in theory, but there is a problem with it in practice.  In many of the countries where trophy hunting is carried out, there is a high level of corruption, and funds can end up lining the pockets of dishonest operators and officials rather than helping to alleviate the poverty of the local people.

When an animal is shot, it can also cause many problems within the population the animal came from.  For example, old bull elephants are favoured by some hunters because they say they are no longer adding to the gene pool and their absence will not overly affect the herd.    However, older bulls exert an important impact on the herd.   They have a wealth of experience; for example they can guide the herd to safety, or to sources of life-preserving water. They also impose order.   It has been shown that young bulls in musth, when their testosterone levels are particularly high, are  more likely to fight each other when an older bull is absent.

For trophy hunters, size evidently matters.   They go after male lions with large heads and impressive manes, and these are often the dominant male in a pride.   However, picking off one dominant male lion could lead to the pride being fractured, and also to the loss of many younger lions.   Lions are a species with a tendency to infanticide, and when a new male takes over a pride he may kill all the cubs of the deceased lion, so he can populate the pride exclusively with his own offspring.

In discussing hunting, and trophy hunting in particular, we need to consider ethics.    In 2015, Cecil the Lion was wounded by American dentist Walter J Palmer who shot him with a bow and arrow.   Cecil must have suffered greatly before he was tracked down by the dentist the next day and killed. How is it ethical to shoot a sentient animal with a bow and arrow, causing them to physically and emotionally suffer, sometimes for days, from their wound?  The phenomenon of ‘canned hunting’ is another case to be considered here.  According to Ian Michler, a South African safari operator and photographer who investigated the canned lion industry for the 2015 documentary Blood Lions, cubs are taken from their mothers and brought to petting zoos. When male lions grow into adulthood, they are lured within the sights of the ‘hunter’ for fees that are much lower than other trophy hunts,  and therefore more affordable to the non-wealthy.  The animals are pretty much sitting ducks.    And there is another deleterious spinoff from hunting lions.  Hunters have no need for the bones of the animal, so these are shipped to Asia where the wealthy can eat them crushed into a powder and consumed as a health tonic and aphrodisiac.   Thus trophy hunting is spurring on more demand for lion bones, and this is encouraging cruel and illegal poaching of lions in the wild.

A newspaper report recently revealed that some hunters are willing to pay to have leopards ‘kneecapped’ so they can shoot them more easily.

The questions must be asked:  Even if convincing evidence did exist that trophy hunting can produce conservation benefits, is it ethical to cause the death and suffering of individual animals to save a species?   Even if a killing has the potential to produce a social benefit, does that in itself mean it’s ethical?

Do humans owe anything to other species at all?  Are our own rights all that matter?

As the dominant species on the planet we have considerable potential to exploit and destroy nonhuman animals, and we have always done so.  Animals, particularly wild animals and farmed animals, are scarcely viewed as living, feeling, intelligent beings at all, but given value in relation to their economic or property value to us.   Is it not time that other animals were legally protected from our destructive activities?  At present protection for farmed animals is so weak that cruel factory farms are legal everywhere in the world, and where wildlife laws exist, they almost always correspond to species and not to individuals.

Clearly, trophy hunting brings pain, fear, suffering and death to both the individual killed and to members of their family left more vulnerable because of the killing, and possibly left them in mourning.  Many studies have shown that elephants and primates mourn, and if it is true for them, it could also be true for other species.

There is no need for us to be killing wild animals at all.  Alternative conservation approaches like photo tourism where the shooting is done with a camera and not a rifle could take the place of trophy hunting.  Substantial conservation income to benefit animal populations and local people can therefore be gained without having to take the life of a sentient being.

There is an easy solution to trophy hunting in places like Africa.   Governments around the world simply need to place a ban on trophy imports, and host countries begin to support alternative, ethical methods of conservation and income generation.  This would be a win-win for all.

Except, perhaps, for those who just enjoy the thrill of the kill.

IT IS TIME TO CLOSE LIVE ANIMAL MARKETS ACROSS ASIA

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Key Points:

We need to take measures to reduce the chances of life-threatening viruses issuing from ‘wet markets’ ever happening again.

 

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, despite its name, does not sell just seafood – also available were hundreds of live animals for sale, including turtles, snakes, rats, wild cubs, as well as cats and dogs for the meat trade.

 

Such markets are not only present in China – they are seen all over Asia. Outside of the disease risk, these markets almost always present severe welfare issues for all the animals involved, as they watch their companions roughly handled and slaughtered for their meat.

 

The latest outbreak demonstrates, additionally, how cruelty and apathy towards animals is closely linked to human suffering. The illegal capture, transport, holding and slaughter of dogs and cats across Asia is simply a public health nightmare waiting to happen.

 

It is time that we learned our lessons.  It’s time to end live markets and the dog and cat meat trade.

Read the Four Paws article here:

See also: 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby elephant heartbroken over mother’s rejection cried for five hours

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Key Points:

Zhuang Zhuang’s mother rejected him immediately after birth and tried to kill him, rare behaviour for a mother elephant. 

 

Zhuang Zhuang cried with anguish for 5 hours, tears streaming from his red eyes and down his face. 

 

There is solid evidence that elephants, like some other animals, cry tears of emotion. 

 

Just like children, elephants need stable, comfortable surroundings in order to thrive psychologically. Rejection at birth may cause severe psychological distress.

 

Elephants show grief after the loss of a loved one, and they mourn the dead by touching the bones or circling the body.

 

“Life is very vivid to animals. In many cases, they know who they are. They know who their friends are and who their rivals are. They have ambitions for higher status. They compete. Their lives follow the arc of a career like ours do. – Wildlife author, Carl Safina

 

Read the Stay Naturally Healthy article here

Voices for Animals Across the Years – Heli Dungler 1963-2020

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on Voices for Animals Across the Years – Heli Dungler 1963-2020

A jackdaw Heli Dungler rescued as a child and kept as a pet is credited with his realisation that wild animals needed to be in their own environment, with their own kind. “She had fallen out of the nest and I took her home and raised her” he said. ”She accompanied me everywhere.  She was incredibly witty and intelligent.  But then one day a flock of jackdaws came into the village and she showed me that she would like to fly with the others,    I let her go.  At that moment I realized that caring for animals means letting go.”

The young boy who reluctantly parted with his pet that day grew up to preside over one of the largest animal welfare organisations in the world. With offices in 15 countries, and a full-time staff of more than 400, FOUR PAWS is today an independent global voice campaigning, lobbying and providing sanctuaries for abused animals.  Their vision? A world where people treat animals with respect, empathy and understanding.

 

Heli Dungler was born in the picturesque town of Waidhofen an der Thaya in Lower Austria in 1963, and grew up close to woodlands where he loved to go to observe the wildlife.  At age 19 he relocated to Vienna to study veterinary medicine.  Unhappy with the Course’s emphasis on agricultural work he dropped out of veterinary school and took a job managing marine mammal campaigns for Greenpeace Austria.  Inside him, his desire to actively promote animal welfare was growing, and in Vienna in 1988 he and three friends founded ‘Vier Pfoten’ ‘FOUR PAWS.’

One of the first campaigns of the fledgling organisation was against the fur industry.    At the time – and even now – fur animal husbandry is not regulated, and typically animals raised for their pelts are kept in tiny cages and are sometimes skinned alive.  As a direct result of FOUR PAWS campaigns, which in part mounted opposition to the contamination of groundwater fur farming produces, the last fur farm in Austria closed in 1998.

Other early  campaigns were for higher animal welfare standards in agriculture, especially hens in cages, and for the liberation of wild animals used in circus acts.

In 1998 Vier Pfoten debuted in sanctuary work by founding the Bear Sanctuary Arbesbach in Austria. In November 2000, in  partnership with the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, it opened a 2.7-acre sanctuary called the Belitsa Dancing Bear Park  in Sofia, Bulgaria.   Bulgarian Dancing Bears are trained to ‘dance’ using a particularly cruel method of conditioned response.   A nail is hammered into their sensitive nose and a ring inserted so they can be led by a chain. Then they are put on hot plates or hot ash, at the same time as the owner plays on a violin or accordian.   The sound of the musical instrument eventually becomes the ‘trigger’ to get the bear moving or ‘dancing’ before the public for money.   Because of the work of Four Paws, by 2007 there were no more “dancing bears” in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Parliament declared European brown bears a protected species who could no longer be hunted, bought, sold,  or displayed to a paying audience.

FOUR PAWS currently has seven bear sanctuaries, yet it is estimated that hundreds of bears are today still kept in captivity in Europe, some of them in the most appalling conditions. In Southeast Europe in particular they are often held in cages that are far too small, badly structured and inadequately equipped. Not only circuses and private owners keep animals in conditions not suited to their species, many zoos and animal parks do too.

One of the most egregious ways bears are treated is in the bear bile industry.   Many thousands of  Asiatic black bears are kept captive in China, Vietnam and elsewhere for their bile. Bear’s bile is extracted using various invasive techniques, all of which cause severe suffering, pain and infection.

The method claimed to be the most ‘humane’ by bile farmers, is a ‘free-drip’ method, where bears undergo crude surgery by unqualified people to create a permanent open passage from their gallbladder through their abdomen. The bile is ‘tapped’ by forcing a metal tube through the wound to reach the bile in the gallbladders.  Not only do they endure this constant pain, many bile bears are confined in ‘crush’ cages where they can barely move and endure.

In September 2019 FOUR PAWS rescued 7 Asiatic black bears from their tiny cages in a southern Vietnam bile bear farm, and were relocated to their new, species appropriate home in Ninh Binh.

In the 1990s, as his organisation grew, Dungler needed to spend more time in his directing/administration role, and the  public face of Vier Pfoten became chief veterinarian and project manager, Amir Khalil.  On behalf of FOUR PAWS he led dramatic rescues of starving animals left in zoos after wars in eastern Europe, Libya, Yemen and the Gaza region.   Seven hundred  animals were rescued from the Tripoli Zoo after the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi regime.

In the 2000s FOUR PAWS won global acclaim for their sterilization and vaccination programmes for dogs and cats. Ahead of the Euro 2012 football championships in 2012, they treated 4,000 street dogs in the Ukraine, including descendants of pets who were left behind after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

In the early 2000s, Dungler formed a South African subsidiary,  and bought a formerly notorious hunting ranch,  along with all of the animals there that the previous owner was willing to sell.  Khalil was sent to South Africa to supervise turning the hunting ranch into the Lionsrock sanctuary and destination resort that opened to visitors in February 2008.  Among the few big cat sanctuaries worldwide, it houses  77 big cats often from failed zoos and circuses, in a semi-wild environment.

In 2018 FOUR PAWS began work on a  sanctuary for elephants in the Bago region of Myanmar, to house former working elephants.  Demand for teak has decreased in Myanmar because of stricter environmental controls, and logging elephants are no longer needed.  Elephants who no longer have any economic purpose are killed or sold into the tourism industry since elephant rides are still viewed as an attraction.  FOUR PAWS are giving these magnificent endangered animals a sanctuary where they can recover from their past labours, and ideally be introduced back into the wild.

It was on a visit to Lionsrock on January 7, 2020, that Dungler suffered a massive heart attack and died suddenly.   The organisation he presided over released a statement.

“His death is a severe blow for us and fills us with great pain…  The world has lost a very special animal lover and visionary.  We will honor his memory by continuing the work he loved so much, in his spirit.”

Rest in Peace Heli Dungler.  Your life’s work will continue through the organisation you founded.

Sandra Kyle

KOALAS COULD BE LISTED AS ENDANGERED AFTER FIRES

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Key points:

  • Charred bodies of animals are strewn all over on Kangaroo Island, south of Adelaide, where an estimated 37,000 koalas have been killed in the bushfires.

  • A koala was photographed appearing to bury its face in its arms in sorrow, while its companion’s lifeless body lay nearby.

  • WWF-Australia estimates that 1.25 billion wild animals have died in Australia during the crisis in addition to livestock losses, which the government expects will exceed 100,000 animals.

  • Australian Environment Minister Sussan Ley said koalas could be listed as endangered for the first time.

  • Donate to HSI to support their animal rescue fund.

  • Donate to 1300KOALAZ Adelaide and Hills Koala Rescue’s fundraiser to help them continue saving and caring for koalas.

  • Donate to WIRES’ emergency fund for saving wildlife affected by the fires.

  • Donate to WWF’s Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund.

  • To help people and firefighters, donate to the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery.

  • Sign this petition demanding climate change action from Australian leaders as well because climate change has certainly contributed to the record-breaking intensity of these fires.

 

Read the Metro UK article here

In the wake of Lewis the Koala’s death, there is Hope

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Millions are grieving the death of Lewis the Koala but his legacy will live on,  writes End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH.

 

Ellenborough Lewis – or Lewis for short – has died. The rescued koala received substantial  burns in the bushfires in Australia and was rescued by a passerby. Taken to Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, Lewis was treated for burns and dehydration and given pain relief. Unfortunately he was just too badly burned. Port Macquarie hospital uploaded a post on Facebook saying he needed to be euthanized as he would not be able to recover from the burns.

Just yesterday I wrote an article about Lewis on this website, believing that he would live.   But today, all hope is lost.   Lewis could not survive the burns to his hands, feet, arms and the inside of his legs, so was humanely euthanised.   Lewis had nowhere to go when his home burst into flames. Neither did the hundreds of others who did not make it out of the Australian bushfires.

Koala Conservation Australia President Sue Ashton has been quoted as saying “We think most of the animals were incinerated – it’s like a cremation. They have been burnt to ashes in the trees.”

It’s a devastating thought, and brings a whole new meaning to the quote ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. Personally, I don’t care much for such quotes. I know we must all come to an end someday, but no one deserves such a horrific death as being cremated alive.

As a child, I lived in Australia for some years. Koalas always fascinated me. They blended into the environment so perfectly, so intricately connected with their home. They are a unique part of the Australian landscape. Reports of them becoming ‘functionally extinct’ are devastating.

It’s difficult to know how to write about such a tragedy without reducing it to platitudes. The bushfires raise so many issues that need to be addressed. Climate change and the increasing risk this poses for bushfires; loss of the diversity of life on the planet; the human impact on the natural environment as we encroach on wildlife habitat. These issues are all so significant in the wake of the bushfires.

I come back to myself as a child, experiencing the koala with all my senses, the way children do. I return to my memories at a time when hope was a natural way of being.

I also keep coming back to Lewis. All animals have an inner life that is often not recognizable to humans. They are conscious of their existence and experience a range of emotions with intensity. They are not ‘lesser beings’ than us. They are our fellow Earthlings, and many of them have been here a lot longer than we have.

As I watched Lewis’s story unfold, along with millions or others, I hoped for his survival. I hoped the little guy would have another chance at life. I hoped life would rise once more from the ashes.  That is one thing that is so great about both humans and nonhuman animals – we have hope. We have poetry in our hearts, and songs in our veins. We have life. We are all interconnected and yet we all experience the world in our own way.

Lewis had his own way of experiencing the world, it was unique and special to him. He was an individual and once we named him, we felt that he was one of us. We thought we knew Lewis. We cared about him and his life, like we would never have if he was ‘just another koala’ sitting in a tree. Once the poetry died in Lewis’s heart, we died a death too.  

Somewhere deep inside us, we know that life would not be so special without our fellow Earthlings alongside us for the journey. We know that life’s poetry requires diversity to thrive and to have meaning.

We must not let hope die. For Lewis, let’s honor his memory by fighting against koala habitat destruction so they do not become extinct. Stuart Blanch from WWF Australia has said that while koalas may become functionally extinct in some areas, there are still large areas with viable koala populations. They will only go extinct, he says, if we make them.

And so our hope resides with people who work to save koalas. Blanch goes on to say that koala habitat will regenerate and this reforesting will build their numbers again. One of the main threats is humans encroaching on their habitat and clearing land. Blanch says: “You can bring more koalas back if you stop bulldozing trees and start letting trees regrow.”

To Lewis, I dedicate life’s song. For Lewis I cry. For Lewis I hope.  Thankyou to Toni Doherty, the compassionate grandmother who rescued Lewis, and to the staff at Port Macquarie Koala Hospital who tried so hard to save his life.  You are our heroes, our Heroes of Hope.

Ellenborough Lewis, b 2005?- d 2019

 

When silent animals cry out in pain…

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH wrote this piece before hearing the sad news today that Lewis the Koala had died from his injuries in the Australian bush fires.   Her follow-up piece will be available on our website in the next 24 hours.   

The upsetting image of Lewis and other koalas burning are an example of extreme weather events brought about through climate change.  Earth and its biodiversity are hurting.   How long can we keep turning the other way? It is urgent we adopt a new ethic to care for our planet before it’s too late.

 

The devastating bush fires in New South Wales and Queensland Australia are a catastrophe that has far reaching consequences – for people and animals. Bush fires are a regular seasonal occurrence in Australia. But what is unique about these latest bush fires is that they are occurring very early in the season on an unprecedented scale.

The bush fires have so far ravaged 2.5 million acres of land, killing at least four people and destroying over 300 homes.

The screams of animals dying in pain are echoing from the bush. It has been reported that koalas are being killed in the hundreds and colonies are being wiped out. One major colony in the Lake Innes Nature reserve has been razed by the fire – and it was once home to over 600 koalas.

Koalas are one of life’s many marvels. They are not bears, but rather marsupials, and have pouched young. They have evolved alongside the Australian Eucalypts for millions of years. They rely on these trees for their survival, having a multi-lobed highly efficient liver and gut system to eliminate the toxins in the Eucalypt leaves.

Koalas and the Australian Eucolypts have evolved together.

I saw the recent video of a koala limping out of the raging fires before being rescued by a passing motorist, who must be commended for her bravery. The koala, a silent animal except for in mating season, cried out in pain as his merciful angel poured cool water on him. While this koala, ‘Lewis’,  was saved, hundreds of others have perished.

Imagine not being able to be evacuated from your one and only home, a source of both shelter and food. Imagine burning to death.

Like many people I have thought about the link between climate change and the bush fires. The science suggests that while climate change may not be the cause of the fires, it is almost definitely contributing to them because of the hotter, drier climate. Scientists have long predicted that that Australian bush fires would become more intense and frequent due to climate change.

Extreme weather events caused by climate change have been predicted for thirty years

We are now living through those predictions and, in my view, it should be a wake up call for those people who still deny anthropogenic climate change.

That climate change is hurting animals is evident. It hurts wild animals like koalas. It also kills domesticated animals that cannot escape extreme weather events. For example in the Queensland floods in February this year 600.000 cattle were killed. Flood waters rose up to form a wall of water 70km wide.

These floods also devastated native species such as marsupial mice and birds. Floods cause disruptions in gene flow in native species, as their range gets limited. Basically the cycle of regeneration of biodiversity is being messed with due to the effects of extreme weather events – the hall mark of climate change.

The loss of diversity of life and consequent extinction crisis we are currently experiencing has passed a tipping point. Koalas may now end up on the endangered list due to the bush fires. They have been in Australia for 30 million years according to fossil records. Humans have been on Earth for 300-200,000 years only. And, according to ninety seven percent of climate scientists, it has only been since the mid twentieth century that human activity has caused climate warming trends. We came, we saw, we conquered.

Basically, in just under two hundred years humans are causing mass destruction and suffering. It is no wonder that David Attenborough calls humans a plague on Earth.

Yet Attenborough is wrong in one sense. We shouldn’t label all humans with the same brush. Aboriginal Australians have been in Australia for at least 60.000 years. The koalas were fine under their stewardship. Yet it has only been the arrival of Europeans and their quest for economic dominance through global capitalism and industrialized development that has caused our current predicament.

Painting by Melanie Hava, Koalas in the Gumtree (aboriginal-art-australia.com)

I’m not trying to single out Europeans – but it is true that many indigenous peoples have lived in sustainable ways with the Earth before European colonization.

Watching that koala limp out of his home, his body singed and burning reminded me of some kind of hell on Earth. This kind of hurt you cannot put a band aid on and you cannot stop it – at least not while we feed the engine of capitalist market economic growth which is at the root of it all.

Capitalism, and ‘economic development, have been trotted out as an unqualified good, yet it’s really a monster devouring whole ecosystems and killing life.   And while capitalism still keeps churning away, run away climate change is fast on its heels. It will overtake capitalism soon, bringing it to the ground, causing untold suffering of animals and people.

Like a sinking ship planet Earth is now struggling to support life on board. The most vulnerable, those without the means to escape, both animals and people, will suffer first. Correction – are suffering first. Media showcases the suffering. We watch through screens – seemingly distanced from the horror unfolding.

There are things you can do now to stop the screams getting louder as forests burn. Stop supporting the industries at the root of this destruction. The animal industries are a main culprit. As Greta Thunberg advises, we need to move to a plant based diet.  Become vegan.

But above all, be kind.  Be compassionate.  Plant trees and not walls – unless it’s a wall for a climber with passionfruit for the bees.  Don’t use insecticides. Nurture biodiversity on the Earth, grow your own food and give some to your neighbors.

We need to be guided by a new ethic of care for Earth, people and animals. We need to scale down, even halt, economic growth. It is the only way we will survive.

The Earth and its beautiful and wondrous life is in danger. It’s hurting. We’re all on the same ship and there is no lifeboat.

Be the lifeboat.

Mother Earth Drawing from paintingvalley.com