The Animal Advocates WatchDog Blog | Animal myth-busters

B.C. government auctions off chance to kill a wild sheep

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Carmina Gooch

February 2, 2013 Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun

“For bid: the smug satisfaction of shooting a wild mountain sheep ram in B.C. outside of the regular hunting season. Expected selling price: upwards of $250,000 US.

That is what the B.C. government is offering this weekend at a conservation fundraising auction during the annual convention of the Wild Sheep Foundation in Reno, Nev.”

My letter to the editor:

Auctioning right to shoot wild sheep is woolly headed

Re: B.C. government auctions off chance to kill a wild sheep, Feb. 2

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. The provincial government is giving the highest bidder a chance to carry out a cold-blooded, calculated execution of a magnificent and defenseless wild mountain sheep.

And it’s being justified in the name of “conservation fundraising.” Doesn’t anyone see the irony here? I suggest solutions without bloodshed, but perhaps that’s too radical a thought.

Carmina Gooch, North Vancouver

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/letters/taxes+from+concern…

Posted in Wild Life - Wild Death

The fur belongs to its rightful owners – the wildlife

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Mike Grieco

Trapping season is upon the animals in the Yukon, as supported by government. Leghold traps, snares and body-crushing Conibear kill traps, the cruel tools of the fur industry, are used to destroy the lives of animals for their fur.

These traps are not selective. They can and do pose a threat to many animals, including non-target animals such as eagles, ravens, deer, moose, family companion animals, and so forth. We have at least one example of a dog caught in a snare set by Yukon conservation officers – yet this remains hush, hush.

Gordon Klassen, the president of Alberta’s trappers’ association, was in Yukon recently teaching wanna-be wolf killers – pardon me, wolf “harvesters” – how to trap and kill many wolves.

Mr. Klassen was quoted saying, “You can catch a pack of wolves,” but he was also quoted as saying, “It can only be done if it’s done humanely, ethically and sustainably.” Mr. Klassen: there is no ethical, humane trapping. Traps are, by their very nature, cruel and inhumane.

It doesn’t surprise me that according to the article, two conservation officers attended this cruel session. And they say they don’t like to kill? Really?
Mr. Klassen … enough, already, using barbaric, cruel and inhumane methods destroying the lives of animals that deserve to have their own lives to themselves. Check your calendar. This is not 1812, and we should have evolved by now.

The fur belongs to its rightful owners – the wildlife.

Please boycott fur products. Thank you!

- Mike Grieco, Whitehorse, Yukon

Posted in Wild Life - Wild Death

“Effing breeders…”

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Lyn MacDonald

The other day I met a woman who told me she’s been “rescuing” animals all her life. She invited me to come by and meet her dogs. I did drop by and met her 3 “rescue” dogs.

We are having tea when she tells me she had 17 puppies last summer. “From where?” I choked. “Oh from these guys” she says, waving her hand at her 1 male, 2 female standard poodles. “But I’m not going to do that anymore, it’s getting to be too much work.”

Then she tells me how she used to breed Welsh ponies, til she hurt her back last year, so she gave the ponies, and the last of the puppies to her daughter in Kelowna, who “found good homes for all of them.”

THEN, she shows me her African finches, who are on loan to her, and she’s breeding them, as well as some canaries in the other room and that she and her friend both breed parrots and that her friend had “donated” her extra birds to the Parrot Refuge in Coombs, B.C. “She donated the ones she couldn’t sell – my friend and I both believe in the importance of supporting rescue.”

Breeding birds and “donating” them to the Parrot Refuge isn’t rescue, it’s insanity. It’s offensive breeding of birds who should be flying freely, profiting from this trade in sentient beings, and dumping what you can’t use in the lap of someone else and counting on them to take care of your mess for the rest of time. And then boasting about it.

What is it that some people are not understanding? Is it the mentality that you are the only one who understands the breed, or the species, so that it is up to you to propagate it? It’s most certainly about money but why boast of being a “rescuer” when you are, in fact, a breeder? Perhaps it’s a way of deluding yourself so that you get both the cash from breeding, and that lovely feeling of being a do-gooder by dumping your birds/animals into a rescue facility rather than the garbage can.

She asked me if I could help out with some pet sitting, but I’m busy. Maybe her friend, the cockatoo breeder, can help her out…

- Lyn MacDonald, Coombs, BC

Posted in Effing Breeders

If you wouldn’t eat a dog why would you eat a pig?

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Judy Stone

Most North Americans and Europeans would never eat dog, but they have no moral misgivings about eating pig.

Most North Americans and Europeans wouldn’t buy a dog from a puppy-mill knowing as they do that dogs suffer terribly in puppy-mills.

But even though most North Americans and Europeans know know that pig-mills are as terrible as puppy-mills, they eat pig with no moral misgivings.

Would you eat a friendly, intelligent, affectionate dog? If no, then why would you would eat a friendly, intelligent, affectionate pig?

Pigs suffer with no hope of rescue because they are not our pets. Rescue is for those who we have decided are pets.

There is almost universal hypocrisy about meat-eating. Beatrix Potter, the author of so many children’s books which always featured cute animals, was ruthlessly indifferent to the suffering of the animals she wrote about. In fact she could be smugly proud of her indifference.

“Pigling Bland” was one of Potter’s money-making little books. Potter lived much of her life on her farm in England’s Lake District. “The National Trust – The First Hundred Years”, quotes her saying about her sociable pig, who cheerfully (and unsuspectingly), invited her attention:

“I had lately a pig that continually stood on its hind legs leaning over the pig sty, but it’s hanging up and cured now”.

Potter kept many of the little animals she wrote so winningly about – mice, rabbits and hedgehogs – in cages for their whole lives so that she could draw them correctly.

Pigs are perhaps the smartest, cleanest domestic animals known – more so than cats and dogs, according to some experts. A sign of their cleverness came from experiments in the 1990s. Pigs were trained to move a cursor on a video screen with their snouts and used the cursor to distinguish between scribbles they knew and those they were seeing for the first time. They learned the task as quickly as chimpanzees. http://nbcnews.to/V0Bpsa

Do you still want to eat them? Or are you okay that they suffer in the millions so that you can?

- Judy Stone, Vancouver, BC

Posted in Who Do You Eat?

Brian Whitlock (Captain’s owner) update after January 29 court appearance

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Adam Lang, AAS Assistant

Captain in the dumpster in Kitsilano

Animal Advocates was in the courtroom on January 29th to find out what would happen with Captain’s owner, Brian Whitlock. (If you are unfamiliar with this story, read the background here.)

Protesters who showed up in September

As we’ve seen every other time we’ve been to court to cover this, there was a small group of dedicated animal-lovers outside the courthouse. They held signs requesting that Whitlock receive the maximum sentence allowable (5 years imprisonment) for willfully causing unnecessary suffering to Captain, his two-year-old German Shepherd. Whitlock had beaten Captain nearly to death then left him to die in a dumpster in Kitsilano.

Whitlock’s lawyer made an appearance, but no plea was entered — he requested more time and the judge allowed it, so it appears that it has been pushed to February 26th. We will keep you updated.

- Adam Lang, North Vancouver, BC

Posted in Captain