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Posts Tagged ‘Government’

California has the incredible opportunity to once again be a leader in animal protection and environmental conservation with a new bill that would ban the possession, sale, trade and distribution of shark fins in California, Assembly Bill (AB) 376. Introduced by Assembly members Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), this bill follows a similar ban in Hawaii passed in 2010 and could help start a much needed cascade effect of legislation to protect the top predator in the ocean.

Shark fining is a process where the fins and tails of sharks are cut off and the remainder of the often still living fish is thrown back into the ocean. Sharks then sink to the bottom, unable to swim and die a slow, agonizing death. Every year, tens of millions of sharks are killed in this manner for shark fin soup, a tasteless, Asian delicacy. This unnecessary dish has been a major contributor to the near collapse of many shark species world-wide as well as in California. Sharks maintain the natural balance in our oceans marine food web. Scientists are warning that the massive decline of sharks is having a devastating effect on the marine ecosystem.

At the heart of the debate is “culture”. Assemblyman Fong, an Asian-American, supports the bill and is fighting for the preservation of the oceans and the sharks. Senator Leland Yee, also an Asian-American, feels that the ban is an attack on the Asian culture as shark fin soup is a traditional Asian delicacy. It is true that cultures and traditions should be respected and preserved, but not if that tradition is causing suffering or environmental destruction. If sentient beings are being exploited, coerced, or are victims of genocide, the global community must step in and aid the oppressed. If a tradition is causing unbalance in the ecosystem, international intervention is needed and necessary- for the ultimate survival of the culture effected. Sharks are being hunted to extinction, and what befalls the oceans, affects us all. The health of the ecosystem is not confined by cultural boundaries and the planet must be protected by the international community.

There is also the culture of the shark to consider. Sharks are amazing creatures in their own right and deserve to live free of human imposed suffering. There are more than 350 different kinds of sharks and most sharks as we know them today developed about 64 million years ago during the age of the dinosaurs. After mating, some female sharks can retain the male’s sperm in their bodies for use when she is ready to reproduce, even if that does not happen until next season. Lantern sharks can glow in the dark. Sharks have a unique culture all to themselves that deserves to be preserved for future generations.

AB 376 will give important protection to sharks to help preserve the ecosystem and biodiversity of the California coast and the world’s oceans. Please support this important legislation and if you are a California resident, click here for more  information on how to help .

Photo Credit : Mike Lorden

I recently returned to the United States from Japan, and while my body is now thousands of miles away from Taiji and the Cove, my thoughts remain with the dolphins and the daily horrors  occurring there.  The killings that took place on the last days of my visit haunt me, but it is in loving memory of those whose lives were lost or shattered that I share their tragic story.

During the early morning of Saturday, December 4th, a pod of over 100 migrating dolphins were ruthlessly hunted down and corralled into the Cove by Taiji fishermen. I watched from the shore as several of the dolphins got caught up in nets, their heads struggling desperately to come up for air, only to be pushed under by the fishermen trying to drown them.  I can still hear the sounds of blowholes spouting rapidly in distress as many were forced to listen to the anguished cries of their family members being killed. And I’ll never forget the sight of a lone baby swimming in isolation from the others in search of his mother. Forty-three dolphins were slaughtered before the fishermen decided to call it a day and leave the others to await their gruesome fate the next morning. Their trauma and terror as they swam close together, entrapped all night in the cove, is unimaginable.

We rose before dawn on Sunday to be at the Cove before the fishermen. After daybreak, it soon became clear why some dolphins had been spared the day before. Accompanying the fishermen, a group of trainers had come to select dolphins for captivity. Witnessing the selection process was sickening, as five trainers would wrestle down each dolphin for harsh examination. They would even ride them to see how they responded.  In the end, six dolphins had been chosen for a life of performance, never to be among their families again. For 36 others, death was their fate, and I listened and watched as they had stakes driven into their backs, and their bodies thrashed about violently in the waters for minutes on end.
Not all of the remaining dolphins were killed, with approximately 25 being released back to sea.  As they swam away the baby was among them, lagging far behind and certain to die of starvation without his mother. I felt I should be grateful that their lives had been spared, but I thought only of the shock and suffering these sensitive beings had just endured. How would they ever recover, and what kind of lives would they be returning to?

While the story of these dolphins in the Cove is no different than the many thousands who have come before, and, sadly, for the multitude who will come after, stories like theirs must be told until the day when all dolphins can swim free from harm.  Please help that day arrive by continuing to tell this story.

Wolves in Montana, Idaho, and the Greater Yellowstone National Park are in grave danger of the Baucus-Tester bill (S. 3864) passing, a legislative attempt to de-list wolves and remove their federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. According to a New York Times editorial, the bill sets “a terrible precedent, opening the door for special-interest groups to push other inconvenient species off the list.” Congress could get away with exempting these wolves without public hearings or comments before the end of the year.

State officials in Montana and Idaho are determined to circumvent a judge’s ruling, last August, in favor of restoring federal protection of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains after they were illegally de-listed last year.  If the Baucus-Tester bill passes, hundreds, if not, more than a thousand wolves would be vulnerable to openly hostile hunters who are eager to eradicate them.  This type of mentality is consistent with what caused the near extinction of the species in the 1930s.  The Baucus-Tester bill (S.3864) will essentially doom the recovery process of the NRM gray wolf population, along with the necessary recovery of other imperiled species, such as the grizzly bear, also in need of federal support,

S. 3864 is scheduled to be voted on in the Senate in a matter of days.  PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW to help the recovery of wolves and other endangered species continue. Urge your Senators to OPPOSE the Baucus-Test bill (S. 3864).  

For more information, please contact Melissa@idausa.org

Photo Credit : Mia Kiander

Standing atop a promontory in Taiji, Japan, I’m enduring an agonizing wait to see if today will bring another merciless slaughter of dolphins. I’ve been in Taiji for four days now and have witnessed over 60 dolphins lose their lives at the hands of the Taiji fishermen. On November 29th, a large pod of more than 50 spotted dolphins were killed, while a pod of 10 risso’s dolphins were destroyed the following day. On both occasions, babies were among the victims. I am deeply troubled that almost a year after The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary the fishermen have employed a new killing method that reduces the flow of blood into the cove’s waters. They have also perfected the transfer of dead and dying bodies under blue tarpaulins so that the bodies are rarely seen as they are moved to and from the grisly gutting barge and butcher house.

On previous days, I’ve watched as so-called “banger” boats round up the dolphins at sea by creating a wall of sound with incessant banging on metal pipes, which drives the dolphins into the cove. Once the net has been dropped, they are then driven farther into the cove and up onto the rocky beach beyond public sight for slaughter. In some instances, as with the pod of risso’s dolphins I observed, the pod gets separated in such a way that some dolphins are slaughtered well before others, and those awaiting their gruesome end must listen as their family members are murdered. The scene is a profound horror, and one can only imagine the terror, pain, and fear that these highly intelligent and sentient beings must be experiencing as they are hunted down and their lives extinguished.

Currently there are 50-60 captured dolphins being held in small pens to be trained for a life in captivity. They can spend months in these pens swimming in mindless circles, undergoing daily “training” sessions, in which they learn that food now comes from a human, and only after performing a meaningless trick like jumping in the air, touching a ball with their nose, or waving their fin. I cannot express how desperately sad and disturbing it is to see these incredible beings, who were living free and wild only days and weeks before, suffer such degradation and exploitation in this way. Their lives have been shattered, their freedom and families lost, and now their dignity taken too. It is heartbreaking and shameful.

As for the fate of the dolphins this day, I am happy to report that due to bad weather, they managed to get away and escape the hunters’ conniving trap. For all the dolphins who won’t be as lucky as these were, please take action to help them.

After more than three years of campaigning, I am thrilled to announce that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has finally ruled to block the National Marine Fisheries Service’s killing of federally protected sea lions on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. In Defense of Animals (IDA) working with a grassroots group the Sea Lion Defense Brigade (SLDB) have organized against the state-sanctioned sea lion killing while the lawsuit that challenged the program languished in court for years. Now all that hard work has paid off and the sea lions are safe from harm!

The court said the government failed to meet the requirements of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and cannot justify killing protected pinnipeds. The sea lion predation of .04 to 4.2 percent of the spring salmon run at the Bonneville Dam could not be considered a “significant negative impact” when the same agencies allow fisherman to take up to 17 percent of the returning fish.

IDA congratulates the prevailing plaintiffs, The Humane Society of the United States, Wild Fish Conservancy and two private citizens. This campaign exemplifies how different organizations, working on legal and grassroots fronts, can reach a common goal for animals.

This is a huge victory for both sea lions and salmon. We are relieved to see an end to the unethical, politically motivated killing of native, protected sea lions and we hope these agencies will now address the human-caused threats to salmon recovery – over-fishing, introduction of non-native fish, dams and habitat destruction.

Since the lethal removal program began in 2008, IDA and the SLDB have worked to protect the sea lions in the Columbia River and hold agencies accountable to the public for this controversial program. Activists organized dozens of demonstrations, met with government officials, and rallied on the steps of the Oregon capital. IDA fought a court battle to free one sea lion named “Willy,” who was misidentified by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and wrongfully removed from the river.

During the 2010 spring salmon season, IDA and SLDB launched a volunteer-based vigil near the Bonneville Dam to track government trapping and killing, and educate the public and fishermen. An RV mobile monitoring vehicle called the “Sea Wolf” kept a round the clock watch over the sea lions.

Among the core campaigners, spirits are very high right now. “I’m overjoyed at the court’s ruling,” exclaimed Bethanie O’Driscoll, one of the plaintiffs and grassroots organizers, remarked after the victory was announced. “It’s been a hard fight, but anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of a sea lion will understand why it was worth it.”

“I’m not going to miss getting up every morning at 5:00 a.m. to try to scare sea lions out of the traps,” joked Julie Farris, a dedicated volunteer who spent months on site at the dam. She reminisced about how our efforts to educate the public and even fishermen really paid off. “We made inroads with people who had thought of the sea lions as a nuisance.”

Our education efforts have set the record straight. These gregarious, intelligent sea lions are a part of the river ecosystem. They belong here as much as the salmon, and should never been killed for simply eating.

This blog was contributed by Matt Rossell, a former IDA employee.

IDA Activists in Action!

Last Thursday, marine mammal activists from all over the world, in over 55 locations, stood together in protest of the Japanese government’s support of the slaughter of dolphins and sale of live dolphins for the public display industry. Events took place at Japanese Consulates and Embassies, sending a resounding message to the Japanese government and a public purposefully kept in the dark that killing dolphins and sentencing the rest to a life of captivity is shameful. How the Japanese government can knowingly allow the human consumption of dolphin meat that contains dangerous levels of mercury and other industrial pollutants is beyond reason. Or how dolphins are mercilessly captured and shipped as cargo all over the world in order to perform demeaning circus-style tricks for food in grossly unnatural, artificial, and highly confined environments.

There is hope for dolphins and other cetaceans through public education and growing interest in finally bringing to an end the appalling dolphin roundups in Japan

Stay tuned for more updates. And if you haven’t already done so, please watch Oscar Award-Winning Documentary, The Cove and Animal Planet’s Blood Dolphins.

Hens in intensive agriculture are crammed into tiny battery cages where they are unable to walk or spread their wings.

This month’s massive egg recall is stacking up to be the largest in history with a mind-boggling half a BILLION eggs snatched back from our nation’s shelves.  Over 1,000 people across 14 states have fallen ill. What’s so crazy is that all this is the fallout from one single egg factory. That’s right, just one facility. That is how outrageously conglomerated our food system has become. A billion eggs from one hen house? Can you imagine what kind of life those chickens must have?

This is no isolated incident either. Just this week there was another recall of 380,000 pounds of deli meats with Listiria contamination, another potentially deadly bacteria which causes high fever, severe headache, nausea, neck stiffness and potential death.

The egg facility involved in the recall has a rotten history. The salmonella outbreak can be traced to Wright County Egg, in Galt, Iowa. They have been the target of government regulators for environmental violations, unsafe working conditions, and sexual harassment of workers, according to the New York Times. Wright County Egg is owned by Jack DeCoster, who also happens to own an egg facility in Maine which was the recent target of a Mercy for Animals 2009 undercover investigation.

The undercover video revealed shocking animal abuse in Mr. DeCoster’s egg factory. Birds were video taped suffering from untreated open wounds, infections, and broken bones. Hens were producing eggs for human consumption alongside their dead cage mates, standing in feces. Workers were seen breaking the necks of hens, kicking birds and throwing them live in trash bins.

Mr. DeCoster pleaded guilty to 10 counts of cruelty to animals and paid fines and restitution coming to over $130,000.  However, it appears from this historically massive egg recall and resulting salmonella epidemic that Mr. DeCoster has not cleaned up his act.  Similar appalling conditions are sure to be found at this factory.

When you keep chickens crammed 10 to a cage and a million to a warehouse, contamination is going to easily occur. These facilities are disgusting, dirty, rat-infested places you wouldn’t want to spend even a minute inside and these poor birds have to live their entire short lives in them. Hens in intensive agriculture are crammed into tiny battery cages where they are unable to walk or spread their wings. Workers have to enter the windowless warehouses with masks and goggles because the airborne fecal dust is so thick. The birds are painfully debeaked. They never set foot outside or feel the sun on their feathers. All their natural behaviors like nesting, scratching, pecking, and preening are completely denied.

So how do we keep ourselves and our family safe from contaminated eggs? The same way we help end the suffering of these tortured hens; by going vegan. We can enjoy improved health and well-being on a plant-based diet without the cholesterol and saturated fat-filled egg. In Defense of Animals has the solution not only to the safety issue, but to the cruelty issue, to the obesity issue, to the world hunger issue. It’s truly amazing how many of the world’s problems can be eliminated with a vegan diet. So recall cruelty! Recall global warming! Recall heart disease and go vegan!

IDA's Barbara Stagno at The Rally for Canada Geese in NYC

A rally for the Canada geese of New York City. It could have been a dream, with all those people lining the steps of City Hall, but it was real. A day before, I had prepared my talk, and wrote about how wildlife does not belong to government agencies. I asked the crowd – the then imaginary crowd – to join with me in demanding changes for how our government deals with wildlife.

When I wrote those words I had no idea that one day later, more than 150 people would join the IDA rally for the Canada geese. I couldn’t have imagined the passionate and enthusiastic voices of Councilmember Letitia James and State Senator Eric Adams, who spoke about growing up with the geese in Prospect Park…. playing with them, learning about them. Or, as Senator Adams so eloquently said, learning that, in essence, they are really not that much different from us.

When I saw that spirited crowd, I knew that it was true. That people cared deeply and had come to speak up about putting a stop to the government killing of wildlife. To demand change.

Those words I spoke on Thursday August 12, 2010, could be addressed to any mayor in any city. They reflect the feelings of communities all across America, who have had their precious birds taken from them and slaughtered.

Mayor Bloomberg made the ludicrous statement that it comes down to people or geese.

It’s not about people or geese.

It’s about ways to co-exist peacefully with the animals of this earth.

It’s not about making airline flights safer. Killing resident Canada Geese has absolutely nothing to do with airline safety, as these geese don’t fly that high! There are, however, real ways to make airline flying safer, ways that do not require us to kill – and ways that other cities around the world currently engage in.

We will not stand by while you kill the geese who were over bred to satisfy hunters, and who flew away from the hunted areas to come live in the cities where they are safe.

We welcome them in our parks where they can be protected.

If there are too many geese today in Prospect Park, or Central Park, or Flushing Meadow Park, it’s because of government mismanagement, and we will not stand by while you make excuses to wipe out these wonderful flocks that live in our parks.

The people here in front of City Hall today are sending a message. The government’s war on wildlife needs to end and it needs to end now. Humane solutions exist and we demand that they be used.

Let’s start right here in New York City, home of a diverse community of compassionate and tolerant citizens, who have welcomed millions of people from around the world to take refuge in our city.

Out of this heritage of kindness and tolerance, let us reverse the senseless killing of animals perpetrated by government and herald in a new era for wildlife.

Please take moment right now to send a letter to Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Council and Save Our Geese!

Wild horses gallop in the Rocky Hills HMA, southeast of Battle Mountain, Nevada. PHOTO CREDIT : USAToday

Despite tremendous public opposition and legal actions the Department of Interior is moving forward with the ill-conceived plan to remove more than 6,000 wild horses and burros from our public lands by October 2010. The Obama Administration’s policy has proven to be both deadly and devastating for wild horses. The Calico Complex roundup, which IDA fought in federal court, has to date taken the lives of 186 horses including 30 foals who have died and 40 spontaneous abortions as reported by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
On July 10, 2010 the BLM began this horrific roundup of wild horses in the summer desert heat in northeast Nevada – the Tuscarora Complex roundup. (See USA Today article.) The BLM reports, given the lack of public access to observe there is no way to verify any BLM-provided information, that 22 wild horses have been killed at the trap site and three have died at the holding facilities. After a lawsuit was filed by Nevada horse advocate Laura Leigh, the BLM began to claim the first part of the Tuscarora roundup (in the Owyhee herd management area) was a “rescue” operation – claiming there was not enough water on the range and that horses were dehydrating. Just last week, IDA had a representative on the ground in Owyhee and observed water, cows and plenty of fencing in and around the Owyhee area.

If dry conditions were so severe one would expect wildlife and cows to be suffering from the same dehydration – yet this was not the case. Rather only wild horses were in need of “rescue.” As one local rancher told IDA – antelope and other wildlife can get under and over fencing, but wild horses cannot. If a need to “rescue” horses occurred – it was clearly a BLM-created problem.

Indeed, in mid-May, the BLM conducted an on-the-ground observation at Owyhee; the promotional video resulting from it, actually titled “Extreme Terrain Requires Extreme Diligence,” stated among other things that “There is little water available to sustain more than 800 horses.” (Also see transcript.) Meanwhile, the BLM warned in its own Environmental Assessment that “Given the dry conditions and the expanding wild horse numbers, along with the limited perennial water sources in the Owyhee HMA, the BLM has a very strong concern that wild horses could suffer from dehydration and possible death in the Owyhee HMA this summer” to justify the disastrous July 10 roundup.

Clearly, the BLM should have taken actions (i.e. fence removal, water delivery, etc.) to mitigate any possible problems. The Tuscarora situation is a classic case whereby the BLM refuses to conduct on-the-range management and reverts to the roundup-removal practice which has already been acknowledged by the Interior Secretary to be an unsustainable practice.  In the case of the horses at Owhyee, just like the horses at Calico, the result is needless suffering and death. Thanks to this broken system, we have more wild horses in government holding facilities (36,000) than free on the range (33,000).

In addition to the BLM-created problem in Tuscarora, the BLM proceeded with using helicopters to roundup these horses in summer-desert temperatures while foals continue to be born. This means newborns and weeks-old foals and still-pregnant mares were run up to eight miles in desert heat. IDA has called for a moratorium on summer roundups and filed an administrative appeal to stop the Tuscarora roundup. We recently received the denial on the appeal and are reviewing our legal options.

We knew fighting the deeply-entrenched BLM would not be easy. We pledge to all the wild horses and burros who have lost their lives, families and freedom that we will continue to fight until these magnificent beings are truly protected and finally given their fair share of our public lands.

Stay tuned for our next action alert – another step in this long fight to bring about the change these animals deserve and need.