ANIMAL DEFENDERS

This is Bunny, who got her name because when she was a tiny kitten—and she was a VERY tiny kitten— she resembled a “dust bunny,” one of those lumps of grey dust that you find under a heavy piece of furniture that you can’t easily get under to dust. Bunny matured to a whopping 6.5 pounds as an adult. Because she was so small, she was always at or near the bottom of the “peck order” of my multi-cat household.

VIRGINIA BELL—Animal agriculture produces carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and black carbon. Methane is up to 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, and nitrous oxide is up to 300 times more potent, plus nitrous oxide degrades the ozone layer. BUT they have a much shorter lifespan than CO2, so reducing them would bring a fast significant impact on global warming. Because methane degrades into the less harmful CO2 after about 10-12 years, the IPCC has badly underestimated the impact of methane by using a timeframe of 100 years in its calculations, thereby seriously diluting the global warming damage that methane does each year compared to CO2. 

EMILY BAKER—‘It came as a great release in knowing they were rescued from this factory of death, that they’d be rescued from imminent slaughter.  ‘And yet it felt a little bit unresolved because I wanted to see them completely liberated. I wanted to see them as free as possible’, he added in the film. A year on, he revisited the cows with his sisters. He said ‘it was incredible to see them’ in their natural behavior.

FRED DOMMER—Giving us a respite from the tons of propaganda dross they usually peddle as legitimate information, CBS Sunday included this morning a little story about an injured goose whose companion would not abandon him, after the humans had “captured” him.  (In this case, fortunately for all, it was professional wildlife rehabilitators at The New England Wildlife Center who assisted the injured animal, baptised Arnold by the rehabbers, while his mate was called Amelia).  If you have a friend who is a “sport” hunter, do show him this story. Maybe this Fall he won’t be joining the millions who go into the wild with shotguns and other implements of death to kill geese as if they were simply living targets. 

“It’s very bad when the same people that you are working with [in the community], telling them the importance of wild animals, and you find them killing those wild animals,” says Ruth Sikeita, one of the rangers on the scene.

Papatiti says that while bushmeat poaching incidents have increased over time, the killing of elephants for ivory has declined. He estimates that between three to five elephants were poached on community lands annually from when the OCWR was established in 2010 until IFAW began to support the unit in 2018, when only one elephant was lost. No more elephants have been killed on the Group Ranch since.

“I attribute the success to dedication from rangers and how we built a very good relationship with the community, which is our source of intel,” explains Papatiti.