Sea turtles' turn

Sad to say, a creature that has lived in the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica for 150 million years is severly threatened. And all it took was humans.

Sea turtles have become so scarce that the Leatherback Sea Turtle National Park and a related museum in Playa Grande are both defunct, for all practical (and tourist) purposes.

What happened? Beach development, drift net fishing and Costa Ricans' custom of eating turtle eggs, that's what happened. However, climate change is the overarching reason. It has caused rising seas, more violent storm surges and slow increases in beach temperature (which can result in all-female populations -- obviously a problem.)

Heroic efforts are being made to artifically cool turtle nests and protect coastal property from development so turtles have a place to nest as the sea rises. But the back of the beach is already fillled with hotels, restaurants and planted trees, giving the sand no place to go. "Turtles will have to find their way between the tennis courts and swimming pools," as one person observed.

The ultimate irony: many of those who enjoy slurping turtle eggs in bars from a shot glass . . . have never seen a turtle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html?emc=eta1

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Crating is wrong

Dedicated to all those who think a dog belongs in a crate, day and night, and being outside the crate is the exception -- this sign on a PETA dog park bulletin board:

No, he doesn't "love" his crate.
He loves YOU. And he will do anything to please you, including
sitting behind bars, waiting patiently for you to free him.

No, a crate is not a "cozy den."
A real den doesn't come with a locked door.
No, a crate is not like a playpen.

A crate is an extremely cramped and impoverished environment.
Sure, it keeps dogs safe.
It also keeps them from living.

How would YOU like being locked inside a small see-through box?
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Fur free? if only . . .

The day after Thanksgiving used to be called “Black Friday.” It had to do with major holiday shopping and retailers’ hopes to move financially out of the red and into the black.

That day’s also known as “Fur Free Friday” now. Animal activists converge on sites where fur garments and clothes with fur trim are sold to let everyone within earshot know the horrors behind fur: how innocent animals who can’t speak for themselves are brutally murdered so humans can wear fur.

On Friday afternoon, three activist groups met in NYC to protest at Lord & Taylor then at Macy’s. From NewJerseyNewsroom.com, here’s the link to a story that was written about the event and its leaders: http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/nation/nj-anti-fur-demonstrators-confront-ny-shoppers-on-black-friday
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Happy Thanksgiving

. . . "And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.

“How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices? And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption? The simple answer is that most people just don’t care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds. . . . ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22steiner.html

Good news, please!

A reader’s comment reacting to a recent post here exclaimed at how welcome the good news (about two former service dogs) was. This also happened a few months ago, when a reader wrote some good animal news – about the resurgence of wild turkeys in the area.

It’s true: most of the posts here are in fact warnings or bad news. In part, I think, that reflects what’s actually happening to animals. I only wish it were like most news in the media -- dealing with the exceptions, not the rules. But I don’t think so.

Even so . . . here’s my invitation to any readers with good news about animals: please tell me about it! Then, if at all possible, I’ll post it.

We’d all like to think life is better for animals than it so often seems. But then, all it takes to suggest the real way of the world is a thought about factory farming or the fur industry or zoos and circuses or even the people who leave dogs tied up outside 24/7. . . or those who think the way to celebrate a holiday is to eat an animal.

Calling all good news!
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So-called "service"

Lottie and Janet, from my last post, would have been considered “service animals” during their time as seeing-eye dogs. They would fall in the same category as the myriad animals drafted for service in wartime (see Veterans Day post).

Service animals have no choice! They are selected and trained to do things for humans, often things that have nothing to do with the lives they’d otherwise lead. They perform involuntarily and typically to their own detriment – static, robotic lives, ill health, death.

Non-human animals do not exist to serve human animals!

On Jan. 4 of this year, the NYTimes magazine ran a long story on the many ways that “service animals” help people. The story blurb read: “It's no longer just guide dogs for blind people. Service animals now include monkeys for quadriplegics, parrots for psychotics and at least one assistance duck. Should the law recognize all of them?” (Note: another service animal mentioned in the story: a guide miniature horse, pictured above. Advantages of the horse, named "Panda," included his mild and trainable nature and the fact that he could outlive five-seven seeing-eye dogs.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.html?emc=eta1

The letters to the editor in response to the story included one from a philosophy prof. His key points follow: “[The author] considers various moral and legal issues related to the use of exotic nonhuman species as guides for disabled humans. Except for one: the interests of the animals themselves. . . . they are persons in their own right, born with a capacity for natural freedom that their ''service'' entirely deprives them of.

“Guide animals are brutally separated from others of their kind, are discouraged from seeking affection from other human beings and are reduced to a life of perpetual bondage to their masters. If there is a meaningful difference between ''service animal'' and ''animal slave,'' I fail to see it.”
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"Free at last!"

Lottie is a fit, tail-wagging Golden Retriever, seven-plus years old. Janet is a solidly-built black Lab, also seven-plus. They were both walking with their person through Lawrence’s Community Park when I saw them and couldn’t resist them. They both looked so happy.

Then when I heard their stories, I knew they had reason to be enjoying every moment of life now. Starting with Janet, both dogs had been seeing-eye dogs with a woman in Trenton. When Janet began having seizures, she was retired and replaced with Lottie. Then Lottie was bitten by another dog, and she too was removed from duty.

In short succession, a couple in Ewing adopted both dogs, and the husband was walking them this morning. (His wife works part-time, and she knew of the Trenton woman and the dogs’ problems through her job.)

Anyway, there were Lottie and Janet, free! For them, no more doing only what their human needed them to do -- sitting for hours, sleeping by her bed, leading her on leash. Their confined, constrained lives were over (and Janet has had no more seizures), and as their person said, “Now they sleep on the bed!”

Hope it's a sturdy king-size bed!
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