The PETA Animal Times
Filed Under Animal Conservation | Leave a Comment
Its not often that I find something of real value to write about here at Angel For Animals, but sometimes there will be something that grabs my attention and this magazine did just that. The PETA Animal Times is sold by the Magazine Discount Company and can be bought online for just a dollar by clicking the image below.
This magazine is very informative and has plenty of great articles for animal lovers, as well as resources for finding animal-friendly products and recipes. The PETA Animal Times also reports on a wide variety of animal rights issues from their treatment in laboratories to how they are treated in factory farms. It helps PETA directly as the small profit they make is plowed back into promoting and raising awareness of PETA itself.
Terry Didcott
Angel For Animals
Elephants Habitat Threatened
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Following on from my last post Dog Rescue in the UK, which covered some of the things that are being done to alleviate the problems with stray dogs in the UK, I’ll now turn my attention to the plight of the elephants.
Elephants are without doubt the largest land animals alive on this planet of ours. They need plenty of open space in order to give them free range to roam and graze. Elephants have seasonal migration routes that cover many hundreds of miles.
The problems the elephants face at present is that as the human populations rises, land that was originally wide open and free for elephants to cross is gradually being cleared for agricultural purposes as well as other kinds of human development.
Habitat loss for the elephants will mean that this already endangered species will ultimately end up sharing ever smaller tracts of land in constantly decreasing areas. In the natural world, apart from human interference, it is common for elephants and their close relatives the rhinos to clash with one another when they are forced into close proximity with one another. Another problem is that when animals are effectively trapped together on small, restrictive areas of land, it has the devastating effect of restricting the gene pool as well as resulting in shortages of food and water.
Where elephant reserves come into close proximity with human agricultural areas, the elephants are naturally tempted to leave their reserves and parks to raid crops and grain stores. a mature elephant As male elephants can weigh in the region of 6,000kg only the very sturdiest walls will stop one from breaking through, so farmers have many problems protecting their fields and crops.
These problems are not restricted to the African elephant reserves. In India, the elephants don’t just raid farms and stores for food. Some have interestingly developed a taste for the locally brewed rice beer and set off on drunken rampages through villages and other human populated areas. In the Assam region, conflict between elephants and humans has resulted in more than 150 people killed as well as over 200 elephants also killed in the space of just two years.
The dilemma is that where human communities struggle to grow barely enough for themselves to eat, marauding elephants are not tolerated and so are shot, speared or even poisoned. This latter practice does terrible damage as it also affects other wildlife that scavenges the poisoned meat left for the elephants.
Further problems arise when human poverty leads to the elephants being slaughtered for meat. This is a real problem in regions in central Africa. Here elephant carcasses have been discovered completely stripped of flesh, but with the valuable tusks left intact.
When people do not have enough food and their own country’s governments simply cannot or will not afford to enforce the necessary poaching bans, the outcome can easily be predicted.
There is another constant threat to the swindling elephant population: Ivory.
Ivory is derived directly from elephant tusk. The tusks are simply oversized incisors which may grow to be up to 3m long and both male and female African elephants can grow large tusks.
It is a damning indictment on mankind that during the 1970s and 80s, with demand for ivory still very high, the poaching of elephant tusks contributed to drastically reducing the elephant population from around 1.3 million to a mere 600,000. During this time, a thousand elephants were being killed every week by poachers.
Thankfully, this sickening trade in African elephant ivory was eventually banned in 1990 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). However, the poaching still continues and there is some evidence to suggest it is on the increase.
Most new ivory has its source in Africa. It is sold as a material of high status in some Asian countries such as Thailand, China (mainland) and Japan. The ivory is carved to produce merchandise ranging from ornaments to chopsticks and ink stamps.
The conservation priority has to change public attitudes.
But in some southern African countries where conservation efforts have been successful, an incredible problem arises. As there is a lack of room for the growing elephant population the animals have to be culled.
A meeting in November 2002 of CITES ruled that the countries Botswana, Namibia and South Africa can sell stockpiled ivory, commencing in 2004.
Conservationists are convinced that this lunacy actually fuels the demand for ivory and will simply leads to more poaching. It is impossible to tell the difference between legal and poached ivory. However, in typical government speak, they argue that the legal ivory sales actually fund conservation work.
Does that argument make sense to an intelligent, free thinking human mind? I don’t think so. Only a fool would believe that political language engineered claptrap.
Dog Rescue in the UK
Filed Under Animal Help | 1 Comment
In the last article Plight of Primates, I covered the news of problems facing the world’s primate population as constant and relentless deforestation continues to rob our closest animal brethren of their habitat and thereby reduces their numbers. Here I’m going to cover something closer to home in the problems facing our best friends, dogs.
Dogs have been one of the primary domesticated animals since humans began to live in communities and farm the land, their being a useful guard for our livestock, early warning signals for the threat of intruders, of great assistance in tracking down and capturing our prey and of course being our constant companions.
Of course these days, we don’t really need our dogs for most of the things our early ancestors did, but they are still great companions and live happily in the family unit as our friends, guards and sources of endless entertainment.
So it seems so out of sorts when you hear of so many dogs that are abandoned or badly mistreated by their owners, who are supposed to be their loyal friends. If it were a handful of cases here and there, then you could reason that there are always going to be bad apples in every barrel and some human beings are simply so barbaric and uncouth as to not be worthy of the friendship and unconditional love that a dog gives to its owner.
But it’s not just a handful of scattered cases, but literally thousands of abandoned or mistreated dogs turn up at rescue centres all over the UK every day. Worldwide the numbers arer staggering, easily running into millions.
Its a sad indictment on our race that so, so many people can be so unworthy of being referred to as “civilised.”
So it is for these poor animals that we send out our hearts and prayers to and hope that the rescue centres that take them in and nurse them back to health in cases where they have been mistreated and abused can keep going with the meagre funding and charitable income that sustains them.
The Dog Rescue Pages list many of the dog rescue centres in the UK so if you need to get in contact with them for whatever reason, simply follow that link to their website.
Here at Angel For Animals, we can only write about what we hear about and try to raise the awareness of the plight of animals wherever they are in our society or in the wild. Let’s hope that people begin to become more civilised as the evolution of our species continues and we have the need of fewer rescue centres for dogs and anu other domesticated animals.
Then our dogs can become a true part of every family giving the joy and companionship that every dog shoudl ring to every family, playing happily with the kong toys for dogs that the parents buy so their children, whos lives can only be enriched by growing up with a dog in the family and learning from an early age to respect their dog as a member of the family, can enjoy the association of their pet.
Terry Didcott
Angel For Animals
Plight of Primates
Filed Under Animal Conservation | 1 Comment
In the last post Donkeys in Spain, we looked at the problems facing donkeys in Spain. In this instalment, we take a look at a very disturbing fact concerning the primates that we share this planet with.
Incredibly, a third of the entire world’s primate species now face the very real threat of total extinction. Eminent scientists warn that man’s closest relatives, those of the great apes, could really be extinct within 20 years if current trends continue.
The ongoing conflict between humans and wildlife is becoming increasingly common as the human population continues to grow and the natural habitat declines. Both people and primates are at great risk from the loss of our food sources, as well as increased disease transmission, injury and ultimately, death.
Conservationists are desperately endeavouring to develop several mitigation strategies that can both protect the endangered species, such as great apes, as well as to assist local peoples to improve their way of life. As you can imagine, this is a considerable challenge, especially when there is the consideration of crop raiding thrown into the mix.
For many centuries, the practice of hunting for bushmeat was a sustainable means of providing food for families and tribes. Nowadays however, the demand for bushmeat has risen steeply and, while primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees only make up a small proportion of the bushmeat trade, the overall effect on their population is quite devastating.
While there is no argument that people have to eat, conservationists are trying to encourage people to find viable alternative sources of food. To this end, the idea is to persuade local people that it is important to keep primates alive and in the wild. That way, greater levels of much-needed income can be far more readily generated through the tourism trade.
Another major problem for primates is the wholesale deforestation of their natural habitats and the worst culprits for the cause of this are the developed nations, as they are the main consumers of tropical hardwoods. The Forest Stewardship Council and organisations like them have independent monitoring schemes that are meant to determine which products are sourced from sustainable forests. If we in the developed countries are careful to choose these, then the loss of vital habitats will be greatly reduced.
Another problem that the tropical rainforests face is deforestation for fuel, primarily for cooking. One extremely viable answer to this is solar cookers which are devised from nothing but a foil-lined cardboard box which harnesses the sun’s rays to produce plenty of heat to cook any food. Solar cooking is being promoted by conservationists to help reduce the need for firewood in human settlements, especially those that are near primate habitats.
While these measures are a step in the right direction, they alone will not save these endangered animals. But what they can do is help enormously with the proper education and resources to implement them.
Terry Didcott
Angel For Animals
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