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Posts Tagged ‘Endangered Species’

Two wild caught eighteen-month-old baby elephants will be sent from Zimbabwe to North Korea, as part of a sale that includes a variety of wildlife, including pairs of giraffe, zebra, antelope, hyenas, monkeys and birds. News sources are also reporting that as many as five other countries, including Japan and Mozambique, are requesting similar purchases of wild animals from Zimbabwe.

According to experts, the elephant calves may be too young to endure the cruel trauma of capture, separation from their mothers, and the 7,000-mile trip to North Korea. If they do survive, they almost certainly will not be held in conditions that meet their physical and psychological needs, ensuring a lifetime of suffering and a premature death. Other wild animals involved in the transfer are not expected to fare any better, compounding this unnecessary tragedy.

Elephants’ profound social bonds make separation of calves from their mothers highly traumatic for the baby and remaining family members, causing enormous suffering. In the wild, elephant mothers fiercely protect their young, whom they nurse until they are four years old. Calves never stray far from their mothers, and they enjoy the nurturing attention of other females in the family who help care for and rear them. Female offspring remain with their mothers for life.

IDA is a signatory, along with conservation groups, elephant experts, animal protection groups and biologists around the world, in support of a letter sent by world-renowned elephant authority and ElephantVoices co-director Dr. Joyce Poole to Zimbabwean leaders. In it she states:

“We urge you not to underestimate the impact on world opinion of the distressing sounds and imagery of elephant calves and juveniles being forcibly separated from their families, captured and then undergoing inhumane taming and training methods, and a lifetime of captivity in a country that is not known for its adherence to international standards and norms. These practices are totally unacceptable for an enlightened public and continuation is bound to lead to public petitions, campaigns, and increased negative publicity for Zimbabwe.”

Please help stop Zimbabwe from transferring these elephant calves and other wildlife to North Korea by writing a polite letter to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, urging him to do the right thing and cancel the sale. Tell him that you strongly oppose the export of baby elephants and other wildlife from their natural habitats, and urge him to show that Zimbabwe truly cares about preserving and protecting its wildlife heritage by halting the sale. Respectfully let him know that the world is watching.

To contact Prime Minister Tsvangirai, please:

1. Go to the website www.zimbabweprimeminister.org

2. On the horizontal menu near the top of the page, click on “Contacts” at the far right.

3. Send an email to the Prime Minister.

IDA filed a complaint today with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over an incident in which an elephant named Viola temporarily escaped from the Cole Bros. Circus in Lynchburg, Virginia, and was injured after a fall. We have called on the USDA to order  Cole to cease using Viola in performances or to give rides until the incident is thoroughly investigated and her health status – both physical and mental – is fully evaluated.

Viola reportedly was “startled” by a rabbit and ran past customers waiting to purchase tickets on Tuesday evening, ignoring her handler’s commands. She was completely out of control and it is just luck that no people were injured or killed. Viola fell down a steep embankment and injured her shoulder and foot. It took several efforts to get her to her feet, and nearly 30 minutes to bring her back under control.

Such events are all too common. Just a few weeks ago, the elephant Dumbo- reportedly also “startled” –  killed her handler at a Pennsylvania Shrine Circus. Last fall, an elephant with a history of breaking loose escaped her handlers and was struck and injured by an SUV.  Since 1990, at least 14 human deaths and more than 120 human injuries have been attributed to elephants.

In one particularly notorious incident, the elephant Tyke, while performing for a circus in Hawaii, killed her trainer and gored her groomer before hundreds of horrified spectators. Tyke bolted from the arena and ran through city streets for more than thirty minutes. Police fired 86 shots at Tyke, who eventually collapsed and died. A similar incident occurred at a circus in Palm Bay, Florida, involving the elephant Janet, who was carrying people on her back at the time. Viola is also used to give rides.

Given the realities of circus life for elephants – constant exposure to changing environments, bright lights, loud noises and being in crowds with children and with other animals – it is inconceivable that a healthy elephant would be so startled by a rabbit that she would flee. We have suggested to the USDA that this likely means that she is already under excessive stress, meaning that a flight reaction could be triggered easily, at any time, even while performing or giving rides.

Viola is one of three Carson and Barnes elephants (along with Nina and Libby) leased to Cole for the season. We will continue to monitor them all as Cole travels around the eastern US.

Please click HERE to join IDA’s Elephant Task Force to learn more about what you can do to help elephants.

This blog was contributed by Deborah Robinson, IDA’s Captive Elephant Specialist.

The San Antonio Zoo has announced that Queenie arrived Wednesday morning. We ask that you continue to call Secretary Vilsack’s office at 202-720-3631 and express your outrage. Tell him the USDA is responsible for this move and must take immediate action to remove Queenie and send her to the PAWS sanctuary. Read more.

This blog was contributed by Deborah Robinson, IDA’s Captive Elephant Specialist.

This week, thanks to you, the USDA has been getting a sense of just how much Queenie the elephant has touched hearts around the country and the world. Our pleas for calls to Secretary Vilsack have been taken up by bloggers, tweeters, Facebook groups and people everywhere. The office is being deluged with calls; USDA staff is unable to manage them. They are diverting callers to various Animal Care offices, but the Secretary cannot ignore the many strong voices calling for him to do the right thing: overturn his agency’s decision and ensure Queenie’s transfer to the PAWS sanctuary, rather than consign her to a miserable future at the San Antonio Zoo. (for more information, go to www.helpelephants.com)

We will continue to call in ever increasing numbers until the USDA agrees that Queenie’s needs cannot possibly be met in a zoo whose woefully inadequate exhibit is not sufficient for the one elephant, poor Lucky, already held there. Having already endured a lifetime of abuse in the circus, Queenie now needs space, high quality care, her choice of companions and the peace and quiet only a sanctuary can offer.

Join Team Queenie. Call Secretary Vilsack’s office, and ask your friends and family to call him, too.  If the office gives you more numbers, call them, too. The more calls, the harder it is to ignore our message: Queenie needs sanctuary. And Secretary Vilsack needs to hear that from us. Call him now: (202) 720-3631

One more thing: it’s time the White House hears how many people care deeply about Queenie’s fate. Please send an email to USDA/White House Liaison and urge him to help Queenie get to sanctuary: John.Berge@usda.gov

This blog was contributed by Deborah Robinson, IDA’s Captive Elephant Specialist.

Credit: Yerkes National Primate Research Center

Yesterday, as Americans prepare to file their annual tax returns, In Defense of Animals unveiled its “Top 10 Reasons Why Animal Research is a Cruel Joke” in recognition of ridiculous and wasteful experiments funded by your tax dollars. Why now? Because, when it comes to animal research, every day is April Fool’s Day for American taxpayers.

IDA’s “Top 10” list was selected from the “cream of the scientific crop”: National Institutes of Health-funded experiments that were selected from scientific papers published in 2009 and 2010 (and one from 2008), approved by federally-mandated oversight committees, and published in peer-reviewed journals.  Yet, these experiments add nothing to medical progress and tell us nothing we care to know.  Here are a few examples of experiments that made the Top 10 list:

Warning:  Entire List Contains Graphic and/or Sexual Content

• Female rats might enjoy vaginal stimulation (Dartmouth)
• Mice need only  wheel, not shocks, for  wheel-running (University of North Carolina)
• Baby chimpanzees need nurturing (Emory University/Yerkes National Primate Center)
• Trapped rats freak out (San Diego State Univ., Colorado State Univ., Univ. of Arizona)
• Lizards forced to fight get stressed and then decapitated (Harvard and Univ. of South Dakota)
• Castrated monkeys are less dominant (NIH’s internal intramural labs in Bethesda, Maryland)

These experiments are just the tip of the iceberg of waste in biomedical animal research and the Top 10 list is just the beginning of IDA’s Ridiculous Research campaign.  IDA will continue to expose experiments like these on a regular basis in order to demonstrate that archaic and absurd animal experiments funded by your tax dollars are being conducted every day – not just April’s Fool Day.

Click here to read the entire list and learn more about what you can do to help these animals!

We are very pleased to report that proposals by Tanzania and Zambia that would have allowed one-off sales of ivory and weakened protections for elephants were defeated today at the 175-nation Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha, Qatar.

Tanzania and Zambia were seeking to sell more than 100 tons of ivory worth more than $20 million and to downlist elephants to a lesser degree of protection, despite charges that the countries have failed to stop poaching and combat the illegal ivory trade.

At one point, Zambia withdrew its controversial request for an ivory sale in hopes of winning the downlisting of elephants, which would have conferred them less protections and allowed live exports and a regulated trade in elephant parts – the first step toward the sale of ivory in the future. We are dismayed that the U.S. supported this revised proposal, which failed to win the required two-thirds vote.

There is a clear link between one-off ivory sales, the last of which occurred after the 2007 CITES meeting, and a serious increase in elephant poaching. Even elephants in relatively protected areas such as the Amboseli National Park in Kenya have come under serious attack. AP reports that such sales revive dormant markets by sending consumers the message that it’s okay to again buy ivory; it also makes it difficult to differentiate between legal and illegal ivory. Had the sales been granted, the ivory would have been sold to China and Japan, the only countries requesting to purchase it. Ivory is mainly used for jewelry, carvings and personal seals.

The global ivory trade threatened to wipe out Africa’s elephants in the 1970s and 1980s, reducing the continent’s population of elephants by half – from an estimated 1.3 million to fewer than 600,000 individuals – before a ban on ivory sales in 1989. Even with the ban, an estimated 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks, though the number may be as high as 60,000. Conservationists believe that, without intervention, elephants could be nearly extinct by 2020.

This victory was possible due to the efforts of the 23-nation African Elephant Coalition, which also sought a 20-year moratorium on the sale of ivory that was unfortunately rejected at the conference. Contributing invaluable scientific evidence against the proposals were Dr. Joyce Poole of ElephantVoices and the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants, and Dr. Sam Wasser of the University of Washington, who presented compelling data detailing the problems behind the proposals, the detrimental effects of poaching on elephant society, and the DNA evidence implicating Zambia and Tanzania in multiple ivory seizures around the world.

IDA thanks everyone who contacted Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and their elected officials, urging the U.S. to take a position against the proposals by Zambia and Tanzania.

On March 13, 2010, delegates from 175 countries will take part in the 15^th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Amongst dozens of proposals concerning imperiled species worldwide, they’ll be considering dangerous petitions from Tanzania and Zambia to sell more than one hundred thousand kilograms of elephant ivory and to decrease protections for elephants in those countries. Such “one-off” sales in the past have been disastrous for elephants and led to widespread poaching across Africa. Please read our action alert and send a letter today to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, your senators and representative, urging them to ensure the U.S. votes “no” on these lethal proposals.

The Reality for Circus Elephants - Photo Credit: Born Free USA

Yesterday, in the case of ASPCA et al. v. Feld Entertainment/Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Judge Emmett Sullivan ruled against the advocates for elephants on technical grounds – concluding that plaintiffs Tom Rider and the Animal Protection Institute (API) had not established the standing required for bringing a lawsuit in federal court. The case was dismissed on a legal technicality; the judge never addressed the merits of the case or the claim that the circus’ routine beating and chaining of elephants violates the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

We will have more to say about this monumental legal case as we analyze and digest the judge’s 57-page decision, but we reiterate that this ruling is by no means an endorsement of Ringling’s treatment of their elephants, or even a finding that the elephants are treated humanely or appropriately.

Ringling will no doubt try to spin the decision as a victory for the circus, but it is not a vindication of their brutal training and management practices. In fact, the record established by this trial documents Ringling’s routine abuse of elephants, as Ringling employees and even CEO Kenneth Feld acknowledged under oath and in sworn documentation that:

the elephants are routinely hit with bullhooks,

they are regularly chained in box cars for more than 26 hours at a time and for as long as 100 hours without a break while traveling across the country for 11 months of the year, and for as much as 22½ hours each day in Ringling’s breeding center,

baby elephants are forcibly separated from their mothers for training at age two or younger.

The trial record will stand as a stunning indictment of this circus and its archaic elephant acts, though we will have to wait a bit longer for legal redress.

IDA and all elephant advocates owe a huge debt of gratitude to the attorneys, organizations and individuals behind this lawsuit, including lead Plaintiff Tom Rider, the former Ringling employee who made the legal action possible. We are disappointed that there was no decision on Ringling’s treatment of its elephants, but you can be sure we will continue the fight until there are no more elephants performing in circuses anywhere.

This blog was contributed by Deborah Robinson, IDA’s Captive Elephant Specialist.