Amnesty For Animals – Part 2

The December 3^rd Seattle Times headline read “Scuffle at zoo board’s meeting on where to send elephants”. It seems that dozens of activists showed up at the Woodland Park Zoo board meeting to protest a plan to close the zoo’s elephant exhibit and send its two animals to another zoo. The activists were “demanding its two elephants be sent to a sanctuary rather than another zoo”. They were blocked from attending due to lack of space in the meeting hall, but, after police were called, tempers subsided – at least for the moment.

In November, the zoo had announced that it would phase out its elephant exhibit, saying its two remaining Asian elephants need “a larger social group”. The move was coming after several years of criticism over the zoo’s small, aging exhibit and the quality of the elephants’ lives in captivity. Officials were looking for a zoo that had a stable elephant collection that was free of disease and had an active conservation program that would highlight the threat to elephants in the wild. It sounded like a good plan and a responsible thing to do except for one thing. Activists, according to news reports, said relocating the elephants to another zoo would mean more of the same. “The elephants,” the activists said, “need to go to a sanctuary. They've been in captivity since they were taken from their mothers as babies. They deserve to be off exhibit to heal from the trauma of captivity.”

It is a sad fact that zoos have allowed the perception (not entirely undeserved, unfortunately) that some captive situations can be traumatic. Zoos also stand accused of wantonly breeding animals to produce the cute babies which make them money at the gate. When the babies grow up they become surplus to the zoo’s needs. Sanctuaries have been rescuing these “unwanted” and “surplus” zoo animals for decades.

If zoos are going to survive, I believe they need to step up their game and become the sanctuaries to which people refer, and that will begin with a renewed focus on welfare. At Chehaw Park, for example, the zebras and antelope call a 40-acre pasture home. The cheetahs regularly lie atop a mound watching the world go by, much as they would in the wild. And Bogart the camel appears to enjoy his time interacting with people during his outings as Chehaw’s animal ambassador. Chehaw is a good home for these animals and is an example of a zoo that is also a sanctuary. But animal rights activists would close down even the good zoos and return animals to the wild.

As suggested in a previous post, instead of trying to repatriate all wild animals, I think we need to find ways to allow some of them to live in our midst – a kind of Amnesty for Animals Program. Abolishing zoos, marine parks, and circuses is not the answer. It is these institutions that have developed the ability to live with animals. Granted, there has been plenty of abuse in the past, but times have changed. We need to talk about living together in a global community of zoos, game parks, marine parks and, yes, even circuses. We need to give animals their rights, take them out of the hands of those who will not or cannot care for them, grant them protection under the law, and assimilate them into our lives and into our societies.

Amnesty For Animals – Part 1

I like to think of myself as an optimist – one who sees the glass half full. I am happy with where I am and what I have (although I wish I could do more for my children and grandchildren). But as a conservationist, I can’t help but feel a little gloomy.

Human populations in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to double in the next forty years while the killing of African wildlife for ivory, horns, bush meat, and as a result of warfare continues to escalate in spite of worldwide outrage. A fifth of the vast Amazon rainforest has been destroyed in the last thirty years despite government crackdowns and in 2013 deforestation actually increased by almost one-third.

In Indonesia, nearly nine million acres of forest have been lost to oil palm plantations in the last twenty years. The Orangutan Land Trust's scientific advisory board estimates that some three thousand orangutans are lost each year to habitat conversion and hunting. And if all that is not bad enough, there is global climate change to worry about. Polar bear habitat is literally melting before our eyes.

People who lobby for “animal rights” are also lobbying for the repatriation of captive animals back to the wild. Repatriation is a term that was bandied about in the first half of 2014 with regard to children who were illegally pouring across the U. S. – Mexican border. The term literally means to return someone to his or her own country. But repatriation, in this case, was not a straightforward issue because these children were not from our neighboring Mexico. They were from hundreds of miles away in Central America, fleeing crime, gang violence, and grinding poverty in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. They had no homes to which they could be humanely returned. 

If we are going to repatriate wild animals and move them out of zoos, aquariums, and marine parks, to what wild will they be humanely returned? Does anybody really think we can stem the tide of human population growth and the resulting destruction of animal habitats in wild areas? We may need to accept the fact that the people of Africa, Asia, and South America have a right to expand just as we did in North America and Europe, and that global climate change is going to continue into the foreseeable future. Tying the fate of wild animals to the future of their natural habitat might be ensuring their extinction rather than preventing it.

So here is a glass-half-full thought. Perhaps it is time we recognized that zoos, marine parks, and yes even circuses may hold the answer. It is these institutions that have developed the ability to live with animals and it is to these environments that most wild animals have been able to adapt. Facilities are getting better and more humane while enlightened and loving caretakers learn new techniques to ensure that animal welfare is a top priority. A large, diverse zoo habitat might be a perfectly good, permanent home for some wild animals.

Instead of trying to repatriate all wild animals, we need to find ways to allow some of them to live in our midst – a kind of Amnesty for Animals Program. If we really want to stir up an interesting partisan debate, maybe we could expand our already controversial immigration reform policies to include wild animals from around the world. It puts a whole new spin on the concept of illegal aliens!

Animal Welfare and the FBI

According to a recent article by Sue Manning for the Associated Press, the FBI is turning animal cruelty into a Top-Tier Felony. For years, according to the article, the FBI has filed animal abuse under the label "other" along with a variety of lesser crimes, making cruelty hard to find, hard to count, and hard to track. The bureau announced this month that it would make animal cruelty a Group A felony with its own category — the same way crimes like homicide, arson and assault are listed.

This change will help the FBI track crimes nationally and should boost efforts at the State level, as well. In Georgia, cruelty to animals is a misdemeanor and is defined as “when [a person] causes death or unjustifiable physical pain or suffering to any animal by an act, an omission, or willful neglect”. It is something we see all too regularly on the evening news, but seldom with any consequences for the perpetrators.

Animals might not have rights, at least not as we understand “rights”, but why shouldn’t they have some protection under the law, including international laws. In June of 2006, the United Nations General Assembly approved a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This declaration, before the world, was intended to impart worth and dignity to those people who have no representation in the United Nations. It affirmed that indigenous individuals “have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples”.  The Declaration also affirms that all people “contribute to the diversity and richness of civilizations and cultures”. These individuals have no economic power, no military power, no standing in the world community. They are just people – and they have rights and protection.

I wonder if some groups of animals don’t deserve some similar protections. Why couldn’t we say, for example, that elephants “have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct creatures” or that beluga whales “contribute to the diversity and richness” of our planet?

Author Barry Lopez wrote in his award winning 1986 book, Arctic Dreams, that “we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects”. “Because we have objectified animals”, he goes on to say, “we are able to treat them impersonally” and, I might add, cruelly.

There aren’t many things on which I would like to turn back the clock. I really like my indoor plumbing and my air conditioned home, but it is a shame we can’t reclaim that personal connection to the natural world that was enjoyed by our ancestors. Being cruel to animals is just plain wrong. We shouldn’t need the FBI to tell us that. But I do like the idea that if someone is cruel to animals they might find a black SUV in their driveway, and two agents in dark suits and sunglasses knocking on their door.

Chimpanzees and the Gangland Strategy

A recent article in the journal Nature looked at the question of whether groups of chimpanzees, who have been known to gang-up and kill each other, do this as a result of some adaptive strategies that cause them to “gain fitness benefits by increasing their access to resources” or is it the result of some “non-adaptive result of human impacts”. I was more struck by the fact that they gang-up in the first place. I know they live in tight knit family groups, but forming gangs for, as it turns out, personal gain – well, that hits a bit close to home, don’t you think?

Human beings take great comfort in being included in a group. It is, I suspect deep-seated in our nature, perhaps related to kinship groups and some instinctive genetic survival strategy. When we consider the number of ways we group ourselves, it is rather astonishing. We divide ourselves by race, by nationality, by state or province, and by city. We join churches, gangs, lodges, and associations. We love our own team and hate another, we judge people by their appearance alone, and we somehow decide that God favors our side against another. We divide ourselves to such an extent that we must pass laws to prevent us from discriminating against those who are not like us. We even show hatred toward other groups to the point of war and, in extreme cases, extermination. Think “ethnic cleansing”.

In most cases, we consider our group to be superior to all other groups, so it is not surprising that humans, as a species, can also act as a group. There are humans, and then there are living things that are not human – the animals.

According Merriam-Webster, a tribe is a large family or a group of people who have the same job or interest. We all belong to multiple tribes. For me there is, of course, my main tribe – my family. After family, there is this important tribe:          

And then there are all of these:

       

                                                     

Some tribes are not so good. When I was growing up, it was the Mafia Families that were rumored to spend the winters in our Florida cities. Then it was the street gangs that still plague us today. And next, maybe that is what we see emerging in the terrorists of the Middle East. If you refuse to join their gang, they will blow you up or cut your head off. Wow – not even chimpanzees do that to their enemies!

All Dogs Go to Heaven

My son, Ian, with Chelsea & Bexley

For those of us who love animals, our feelings for a dog that lives inside the house and shares our daily life is special. The connection is powerful. Now that our kids are grown, our dog Chelsea is like an only child. When she is not dragging things out of the garbage can or waking us up in the middle of the night barking at the deer that wander into our yard, she brings us endless comfort and enjoyment. We groaned when she caught a frog in our kitchen, scattering the contents of her food bowl in the process and chuckle every evening when she begins to follow me around the house, giving me the stink-eye until I take her leash off the peg by the door. And we will cry buckets of tears when, in the not too distant future, her life comes to an end. Author Roger Caras said, “Dogs are not our whole lives, but they make our lives whole”.

A recent article on the BBC.com asked Are Dolphins Cleverer than Dogs? Ask most people, according to the article, which of the two species is the most intelligent and the answer would most likely be Dolphins - with their sociability, communication skills, playfulness and ability to understand the complex commands of trainers. They are widely considered to be the second most intelligent of all animals after humans.

But, not so fast my friends. People who study canine behavior are concluding that there is far more going on in the mind of a dog than we previously thought. A dog can use pointing as well as eye-direction cues to locate objects in the distance. Even our nearest animal cousins the chimpanzees don’t look at something when we point to it.

We humans have a habit of judging intelligence by how animal responses compare to ours, but we are almost exclusively a visual species while dogs also live in a world of smells. Their understanding of objects in the world partly involves chemical trails that linger for hours or days. Dolphins are not only visual, but they also have an extra sense that allows them to see through some materials by penetrating them with sonar sound waves. Once subjective, human-centric value judgments are stripped out of the concept of intelligence, the article continues, it makes about as much sense to ask which animal is cleverer as it does to ask whether a hammer or a screwdriver is the better tool. The answer is – it depends on the task at hand.

For me, there is just something about having a dog in the room. I can feel her presence as I write this even though, as I glance her way, she is sound asleep. When I get up in the night, she is there in the dark. I can’t see her but I know she is watchful. When I get home from work she is at least as happy to see me as my wife – maybe more.

A couple of my Facebook friends recently mourned the death of beloved dogs, and I felt their pain. Earlier this year, my wife and I had to have one of our dogs euthanized because of incurable and painful arthritis. Bexley was a big, lovable, shaggy dog. Our friends at the kennel where we boarded Bexley from time to time called her “a clown in a dog’s suit”. I still miss her terribly. Living with her memory makes me appreciate Will Rogers’ comment that if there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.

SeaWorld - Is it worthy of rescue?

I haven’t seen the movie Dolphin Tale but I am familiar with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium from my years working nearby at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo. According to a September 3^rd story in telegram.com, the Aquarium is building a new, 68 million dollar aquatic center in downtown Clearwater to accommodate the star of Dolphin Tale, a rescued dolphin named Winter with a prosthetic tail, and the star of the soon-to-be-released sequel, another dolphin calf named Hope.

This new aquatic facility will be remarkable because designers are saving nearly 100 million dollars by eliminating all entertainment facilities. The focus will be “rehabilitation and marine rescues, not entertainment” and, according to the article, they have videotaped celebrity endorsements to support their project.

This is in stark contrast to last month’s announcement by SeaWorld, who unveiled its plans to open a flashy, new orca environment in 2018. The naturalistic area will cover 1.5 acres and its 10 million gallon pool will be up to fifty feet deep and have an underwater current to provide exercise for the orcas. They are even taking the extraordinary steps of pledging 10 million dollars to research and establishing “an independent advisory committee” to oversee the orca program. All of this, and no celebrity endorsements. In fact, according to the LATimes.com, critics called this a desperate move, suggesting that “a bigger prison is still a prison”. As if to punctuate their predicament, SeaWorld stock is plummeting, their profits dwindling, and the State of California is considering legislation to outlaw the shows that are a staple of SeaWorld’s livelihood.

Such is the power of two movies featuring marine mammals, one an upbeat tale with a happy ending and the other a dark exposé that alleges mistreatment and worse. Even famed primatologist, Jane Goodall has been drawn into the fray. Her recent letter to the Vancouver Parks Board in opposition to the Vancouver Aquarium’s cetacean program suggests that the scientific community and society at large are having second thoughts about programs that keep “highly cognitive species like primates, elephants, and cetaceans in entertainment and research” settings.

There can be little doubt that public views are evolving and that, if zoos and aquariums are to survive, they must evolve as well. But when we talk about marine rescue and wildlife rehabilitation, SeaWorld Parks have been in the field for nearly fifty years. So to suggest that a small facility in Clearwater Florida is doing good work while SeaWorld is not seems a bit disingenuous. SeaWorld may have its questionable practices, but providing quality care for rescued wildlife shouldn’t be in the discussion. I wonder if anyone will stand up for SeaWorld. Maybe they are the ones that need to be rescued.

96 Elephants

I like to thumb through Fortune Magazine when it comes to my home every week because it makes me feel smart. I can pretend to understand articles about big business and high finance. My son studies finance at Valdosta State and he is in some financial honor society. The subscription is actually his.

Imagine my surprise when I was looking at one of the August issues and I saw something I knew a lot about – a full page photo of an elephant. It was on page 45, opposite an article on whether Tech CEO’s should take their companies public. The caption under the elephant read “Take Action Now”. I recognized this as the slogan of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s 96 Elephants Campaign, but what was it doing in a magazine about finance?

The 96 Elephants campaign is based on the appalling fact that 96 elephants are killed EVERY DAY in Africa. This works out to about 35,000 animals killed every year. At that rate, it won’t be long before they are extinct. Imagine the stir it would cause if someone found the last living woolly mammoth and had it on display at their farm. What would you pay to see it in person – to be near enough to touch it? People would be lined up for blocks. Scientists would clamor for genetic material. The government would likely seize the animal as a national treasure. Is that the fate that awaits modern-day elephants?

I hope my grandchildren don’t have to ask me what it was like to see a live elephant. Seeing them in video images won’t convey their size and majesty or transmit the smell and the chest-rattling power of their subsonic communication. Elephants are endangered not due to sport hunting or because of the bush- meat trade. They are endangered because their ivory tusks are a valuable commodity on the black market – valued by some estimates at $1,500 per pound. If you consider that a pair of tusks can easily weigh more than a hundred pounds, you can see the problem. That is a lot of money.

Elephants are endangered because of money, so I guess when you think about it, Fortune Magazine is a perfect place to advertise their plight. Perhaps someone will be inspired to write an article about the economics of elephant ivory trading on the illegal commodities market. As the population of animals continues to decline, I would think the value of their ivory will increase, which seems like simple supply and demand economics. And when elephants are finally extinct and the ivory can no longer be obtained, I wonder if the value of ivory will seem trivial compared to the value of seeing a live elephant.

The Toronto Zoo - A Grand Opening Remembered

When the Metro Toronto Zoo opened its 710 acre “zoogeographic” zoo on August 15^th, 1974 it was, I believe, ahead of its time. No other zoo took the zoogeographic theme (organized around groups of animals from the same parts of the world) to the level of the Toronto Zoo. Its huge continental areas of Indomalaya, Africa, the Americas, and Eurasia had sprawling, outdoor animal exhibits and each area had an indoor pavilion that was a combination zoo, aquarium, museum, and botanical garden. It would be another ten years before other zoos began to catch up, with the opening of large indoor facilities like the Bronx Zoo’s Jungle World.

I had been working there for nearly a year when the Toronto Zoo opened, and I have long been puzzled about why I have no recollection of the opening celebration. It was the day we had all been working toward and, yet, it is as though I was never there. Then, as I looked back on my diary and notes, it hit me. I was too busy working.

In the days leading up to the grand opening, I was a senior keeper in the Americas section of the zoo. This included an indoor pavilion, a large polar bear complex with underwater viewing, and a South America paddock. The pavilion was largely underground and it held the most diverse collection of animals a senior zookeeper could be expected to care for, including mammals (beavers, otters, cacomistle), birds (band-tailed pigeons, native song birds, waterfowl), reptiles (alligators, rattlesnakes), and fishes. In the days and weeks leading up to opening, and especially on opening day itself, we were frantically preparing exhibits and receiving animals.

The fish had been in their tanks for a month or so, but most of the animals we were receiving had been quarantined and stockpiled at barns and holding facilities all over the region. On July 17^th, we received 1.1 (1 male and 1 female) cacomistles from the Claremont barn and 4.2 armadillos from the south service building. On the 19^th, it was a Mississauga rattlesnake that was donated and four alligators from Toronto’s soon-to-close Riverdale Zoo. On the 23^rd, we received two band-tailed pigeons and on the 29^th, one opossum and three young alligators from Riverdale. On July 31^st, we received a large alligator from Riverdale, a jaguarondi from Claremont, three skunks, fourteen quail of three different species from Kirkham’s barn, two fox snakes, seven box turtles, and a diamond-backed terrapin. The next day, on August 1^st, we received a huge alligator, eighteen song birds, and an otter. We were scrambling to get animals introduced to their new accommodations and to each other. And when opening day came and went, our challenges continued with one day running into the next. It was, I am told, quite an event those forty years ago – and I was there. I just wish I had seen it!