Rights for Other Apes, They Insist. Are They Serious?

August 27, 2008

Dissident Voice

by Lee Hall

Now this is real news: A group of influential Homo sapiens has resolved to grant rights to other apes. Spain’s environmental ministers accepted a declaration from scientists and philosophers; the parliament is now expected to fill in a nonbinding resolution with laws forbidding the use of nonhuman great apes in harmful experiments, or on stage.

Amnesty International has expressed its alarm: What about the rights of the world’s many detained and degraded human beings?

And yet, is there any reason why basic rights to life and liberty should only be discussed with reference to humanity? Can’t we humans act decently - to human beings and others? Surely, respect should be nurtured in all its forms.

…And taking the rights of apes seriously would be a boon to entire forest biocommunities that need us to stop breeding cattle and logging ancient forests and extracting everything we can get our drills into. The best possible outcome from the Spanish resolution would be the start of a robust movement to defend the planet’s untamed places. That would help apes and tree frogs alike, and they all should have the simple right to live as they will.

Click to read Lee Hall, Rights for Other Apes, They Insist. Are They Serious? Dissident Voice (27 Aug 2008).

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Predator control limitations likely to be shot down

August 27, 2008

MEASURE 2: Initiative would ban most aerial hunts of bears, wolves.

By MARY PEMBERTON, The Associated Press

Alaskans were saying no Tuesday to a ballot initiative designed to end the state’s predator control program as now conducted.

With almost 60 percent of the vote tallied, the measure was losing with more than 56 percent of voters saying no.

Ballot Measure 2 would have prohibited the shooting of wolves and bears either from the air or once a plane has landed, unless the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game finds that a “biological emergency” exists and has adequate scientific proof.

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Harbor Seal Pup and Sea Turtle Rescues

August 15, 2008

© P. Wallerstein

This skinny harbor sea pup was stranded on Dockweiler Beach, California. The weakened pup was also suffering from multiple lacerations on its flippers and face.

Marine Animal Rescue rescued and then transported the pup to a care center for medical attention.

Efforts to Rescue Wayward Sea Turtle Begin

The Friends of Animals’ Marine Animal Rescue program has been asked by the National Marine Fisheries Service to assist in the rescue of one, possibly two, wayward green sea turtles caught in a mile long flood control channel in southern LA County. The turtle is in no immediate danger. The 3 foot, 40 pound turtle has enough food in the channel, but with no chance of returning to the ocean on its own, the endangered animal will need human assistance.

The 50 foot wide, 20 foot deep, mile long flood control channel offers many challenges for the rescuers. A rescue plan is being developed while the turtle’s condition continues to be monitored.

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CALL to Action: Reject U.S. Government Proposal to Shoot Horses

July 23, 2008

JULY 2008, DARIEN, CONN. — Following the latest obnoxious proposal this month from the U.S. government to kill thousands of horses, the international animal advocacy organization Friends of Animals again calls for a full moratorium on the government-sanctioned round-ups, sales and slaughter of free-living horses.¹

The federal Bureau of Land Management set out in helicopters and harassed and chased roughly half the western herd of mustangs — a group numbering 30,000 — into a corral. And now, the officials are proposing to start killing them.

Environmentalists, The New York Times tells us, will go along with this violence because they see the mustangs as “top-of-the-food-chain bullies whose hooves and teeth disturb the habitats of endangered tortoises and desert birds.”²

We at Friends of Animals are also environmentalists. We aren’t calling these horses “icons” or “part of the imagery” of the west. We are calling for respect, and our government should deliver.

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