The Death of Lucky (a tribute to Giggles, also murdered by the callous idiocy of humans)

The Death of Lucky
NATHAN J. WINOGRAD

Lucky's life was brutally cut short by idiotic and myopic wildlife regulations dictated by the self-interest of humans. This is what we call the great American civilization?

Lucky’s life was brutally cut short by idiotic and myopic wildlife regulations dictated by the self-interest of humans. This is what we call the great American civilization? To animals the human race is far worse than a global Nazi tyranny. 

Guest Blog by George Washington University Animal Law Professor Joan Schaffner  | Contributed by Ruth Eisenbud in memory of Giggles, another fawn who shared the fate of Lucky.
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Last month near Condon, Montana, two people witnessed a hit-and-run accident where four deer were struck by a car. The two stopped to pull the body of one of the deer off the road only to find that a fawn that had been in utero had been expelled from his mother in the accident.
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The pair rescued the fawn and took him to their home.  Because he was breathing very well and already trying to stand up, they took the fawn to a companion animal rescue in Eureka, where he managed to take a bit of food, then curled up and went to sleep in a laundry basket with one of the resident dogs.  Given his amazing story of survival, the fawn was named, Lucky.Unfortunately for Lucky, the pair next decided to do what they felt was the right thing: They called the game warden with the Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP) to see if there were a rescue/rehabilitation location that could help Lucky.
The Editor says:
IF YOU CAN MANAGE NOT TO PUKE OR BLOW A FUSE ONCE AGAIN ASKING THESE MORONS IN GOVERNMENT FOR THE OBVIOUS...then do sign the petition to the Montana FWP asking them to reconsider this policy and develop one that does not falsely protect public health at the expense  of innocent, orphaned wildlife. You can do so at http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-killing-orphaned-deer.
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The next day the warden came to take Lucky – not to help him, but to kill him. Although his then-guardians pled with the warden for more than an hour, the warden explained that FWP’s policy left him no discretion, that all orphaned deer must be killed as a matter of policy. Lucky was put to death.FWP policy dictates that all orphaned deer (and certain other animals) who are not able to be returned to the wild be killed. Although there is a wildlife rehabilitation center in Helena, Montana, the center refuses to take in bats, skunks, raccoons, elk, moose and deer “under any circumstances, due to risks related to disease, public health and welfare.”  This refusal is dictated by state policy for hooved animals that “prohibits the rehabilitation of ungulates  at the centralized Wildlife Center in Helena or by any third party.
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”FWP claims that, “The policy is necessary because Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a fatal neurological disease that affects deer and elk, is spreading in the United States and Canada. Although it has yet to be documented in wild populations in Montana, CWD is found in nearby states and provinces, and an infected animal could spread CWD from a holding center back into the wild.”  But that excuse doesn’t wash. FWP “tested more than 1,300 deer, elk and moose collected during the 2010-2011 hunting season and did not detect chronic wasting disease in any of the animals.”
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In fact, there have been no reported cases of CWD in Montana and a test exists to detect it. FWP policy could simply be that all rescued animals be tested for CWD.Lucky was born under very tragic circumstances, yet was miraculously saved by caring Montanans – only to be indefensibly killed by the government.
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Lucky isn’t the first baby deer to be killed needlessly. But we can try to ensure that he is one of the last. His tragedy should be a call for reform so that his death will not have been in vain.
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Giggles, the fawn, removed and killed by armed commando that raided animal shelter
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nathan J. Winograd is a graduate of Stanford Law School, a former criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney, has spoken nationally and internationally on animal sheltering issues, has written animal protection legislation at the state and national level, has created successful No Kill programs in both urban and rural communities, and has consulted with a wide range of animal protection groups including some of the largest and best known in the nation. Visit his blog here.


Giggles, the fawn, removed and killed by armed commando that raided animal shelter

When will this madness stop?

This happened in Wisconsin. And it makes me sick. It doesn’t get worse than this. How nauseating and moronic, not to mention pitiless toward animals, can regulations governing the life and death of wildlife get? Not to mention the stupid and uncompassionate people who enforce them.  Who are the politicians who pass such laws? As my fellow animal defender Natalia Jarnstedt puts it, with justifiable rage, “These morons killed the fawn “just because” it was kept at a regular shelter, not a rehabber – it’s their policy! Killing fawns and breaking compassionate people’s hearts is their game!” I have to agree. And what a waste of police and social resources!—Patrice Greanville

Outrage grows as word spreads about baby deer’s death in freak raid (Video)

A ripple of disbelief and rage is spreading across the nation as word spreads about a bizarre raid on the Society of St. Francis in Kenosha, Wis., reported Thursday’s WND News.

The raid, complete with multiple squad cars and several armed officers from the state Department of Natural Resources, was organized after DNR officials received a tip about a two-week-old fawn who was being cared for by the no-kill animal shelter.

The young deer, named “Giggles,” was being cared for by the rescue agency until she could be transferred to a wildlife shelter.

But Giggles never had the opportunity to be transferred because the DNR agents who descended upon the shelter killed her instead.

A shelter employee stated:

“I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag,”

Giggles the 2-wk-old fawn
Giggles the 2-wk-old fawn
Photo credit: 
Via WND News

DNR Supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer defended the agents’ actions, stating that the fawn was killed because she posed a potential danger of disease and danger to humans.

The shelter intends to file a suit against the DNR because they seized Giggles without a court hearing.

No word on how the potential for disease from a baby deer is any greater to the general public than to hunters who handle their “kill,” or to police and/or wildlife officials who remove deer carcasses from the road after they have been killed by a motor vehicle.

ADDENDUM

The Associated Press version

Wisconsin DNR defends removing fawn from shelter, killing it
Associated Press
POSTED:   08/02/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT | UPDATED:   72 MIN. AGO

KENOSHA, Wis. — Wisconsin wildlife officials defended their decision to remove a fawn from a no-kill shelter and euthanize it, saying state law requires such action to prevent the spread of disease.

The fawn, named Giggles, was brought to the St. Francis Society shelter near the state line by an Illinois family who believed the animal had lost its mother.

Shelter workers told WISN-TV the fawn had been there about two weeks when armed Department of Natural Resources agents showed up with a search warrant and took the animal. The DNR began investigating after receiving two anonymous calls about the deer.

Wisconsin law prohibits people from taking animals from the wild or keeping a wild animal without a permit.

Shelter employee Ray Schulze said he told DNR agents the fawn was scheduled to go to an animal preserve in Illinois the next day but they took Giggles anyway.

“Then here they come, carrying the baby deer over their shoulder, like a bag of — she was in a body bag,” Schulze said. “I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s our policy.'”

DNR Warden Supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer told the television station that state law requires animals like the fawn to be euthanized because they could spread disease.

DNR spokesman Bill Cosh told the Associated Press on Friday that the main concern with deer is chronic wasting disease, a fatal illness that affects the nervous system. CWD has been found in 17 states. To help prevent its spread, state and federal laws bar moving deer illegally taken from the wild to rehabilitation facilities in other states without authorization.

“These are always difficult situations for both parties involved, and we are empathetic to the fact of what happened because we know in our heart of hearts, they tried to do the right thing,” Niemeyer told the television station.

She said the fawn was not killed at the shelter, but tranquilized and euthanized later.

“I don’t care where they would have killed her, it would have been wrong,” shelter President Cindy Schultz said.



Death of Indian Working Elephant “Bijlee” Starts Global Movement

We kill them by the thousands for their ivory or for “sport”; exploit them in circuses, and work them mercilessly to death. And we’re robbing them of their ancestral ecosystems in both Asia and Africa. Surely a record we can be proud of.

Bijlee

After decades of exhausting work for her masters, Bijlee was abandoned after her acute and very painful arthritis and other conditions prevented her from working. She was found by animal charities lying in a ditch by the side of a road. As usual this is totally preventable suffering. 


by Jordan Carlton Schaul of University of Alaska on June 30, 2013
Source: National Geographic Newswatch

It was legendary Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan who essentially, with intention or not, launched this campaign to help working elephants through his tweeted and compassionate appeal to animal welfarists.
 
Early last week, Mr. Bachchan requested welfarists and the like, to come to the aid of one suffering begging street elephant (a type of working elephant) named “Bijlee” and it seems to have started a whole movement to end the working Asian elephant practice. 

On June 26th,  News Watch published a tribute to Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan by India’s largest wildlife conservation and animal welfare organization, Wildlife SOS.

The tribute recognized the Bollywood icon for bringing attention to one 54 year old suffering female Asian elephant — “Bijlee”— who was fighting for her life in critical condition on the side of the road in a suburb of Mumbai, India. First on the scene was the Indian charity Animals Matter To Me, followed by countless other groups including Wildlife SOS.

[pullquote] Elephants continue to be exploited on the streets of India where they are forced to beg on the streets, in temples and perform in marriages or circuses.  [/pullquote]

Unfortunately, Bijlee died early Sunday morning after her condition progressively deteriorated. “In her last day she remained in a recumbant position and was only able to be repositioned with the help of a crane,” according to Wildlife SOS Senior Veterinarian Dr. Yaduraj. A postmortem examination will be conducted shortly.

[pullquote] Our thanks to National Geographic Newswatch for this report.



WHOEVER SAYS SPECIESISM SAYS FASCISM

(Essay reposted as a result of specific requests by various readers. This article first ran in February of 2007.)

(Art by Sue Coe)

Adventures in the left blogosphere while trying to introduce a discomfitting issue—

It’s a little known fact that factory farms produce more greenhouse gases and land pollution than ALL modes of transportation combined. To be a defender of animals you only need to be a serious environmentalist.

By Patrice Greanville

In general, pigs are clean, intelligent, social animals. However, factory farms frustrate their natural desires to exercise, explore, play, root, stay clean, and socialize normally. (Courtesy: Compassionate Action for Animals)

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]OT TOO LONG AGO I posted, mostly on impulse, as a result of hearing about yet another execrable crime committed against helpless animals (by the usual suspects)…a plea for “progressives” to consider amplifying their scope of moral consideration to include all sentient beings subject to tyrannization. As a lifelong leftist and animal liberationist I am well acquainted with the temperament and idiosyncrasy prevailing in both tribes, and knew quite well that the “left”—however we may define it, has been less than helpful in the struggles to introduce a modicum of compassion in the brutal interactions between humans and non-humans. I know that it seems inane to ask people who are already horribly busy and overstretched coping with the constant tsunami of crime and idiocies produced by this system by the hour…to take yet another “cause” on their shoulders. I am also quite clear about the fact that the Left has never weaned itself off of the 19th century hangover proclaiming “man” (generically speaking) as the measure of all things and therefore center of the universe. This victory of secularism and democracy with a very small “d” was in fact the result of long centuries of struggles against church and king to give rationality and the “common man” a legitimate place at the table of societal decision making. This impromptu essay, therefore, reflected some of these theses.

I posted the blog, as a trial balloon, on SmirkingChimp and DailyKos, large sites occupying what we might call the centrist-liberaloid part of the spectrum. The vast majority of the folks who visit (and participate in) the sites probably see themselves as far more progressive in their politics than they really are, as their commentary reveals a preponderance of mainstream Democrats, ABBrs (Anyone But Bush), Obamabots, a sprinkling of social democrats, and a vociferous contingent of extreme centrists (who naturally never see themselves as extremists). Refreshingly, most of the featured writers seem to be well to the left of the audience (at least at these sites).

He who says speciesism says fascism—

(DailyKos diary at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/2/22518/25695)

Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 08:22:40 PM PST

By Patrice Greanville

We have become indeed not only the most appalling tyranny over every other sentient creature on this planet, including many segments of our own breed, but also a raging, self-righteous cancer extending itself with impunity to every corner of the earth.

Time to do some rethinking

Confined and overcrowded on factory farms. Pigs often become frustrated, bored, aggressive, stressed and more susceptible to disease.

Today, as a result of a voracious industrialism, ecological destruction (to which meat production contributes a significant share) and other related issues, self-defined progressives can’t afford to go on pretending that suffering on such egregious scale is just a peripheral issue, the concern of kooks or affluent diettantes with little interest in other social issues.

Due to a deeply embedded and largely unexamined 18th Century heritage of philosophical “superhumanism” (“man is the measure of all things”) and the rest of that self-celebratory rubbish, which, we should mention in passing, arose as a reaction to a greater form of human stupidity, the one granting God and King total control over human agency, the Left continues to endorse or acquiesce in human supremacist attitudes toward animals.

This moral blindness is inexcusable for those who rightly see themselves as the moral vanguard of humanity. [Check this article, for example: Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left by STEVEN BEST . It’ll probably challenge many of your assumptions.] The bottom line is that speciesism—an underhanded and primitive form of fascism applied to animals and nature in general—is by far the oldest and most pervasive form of enslavement known on our planet. I don’t use the word “fascism” as purely hyperbole in this context or for dramatic effect. I wish it were mostly hyperbole, but the similarities run too deep. Fascism, which worships institutionalized violence, is distinguished for its unilateral proclamations of superiority by a certain race or breed, with such spurious superiority endowing said race with the “right” to dominate, exploit, and annihilate at will any group deemed “inferior.” If that pretty much doesn’t describe eloquently our despicable behavior toward non-human animals, I don’t know what does.

This pig was found dead with frozen blood discharging from his nose and mouth, and several abrasions and cuts on his face, neck, and front legs.  The large amounts of blood suggest that this animal was still alive when abandoned outside in the Minnesota winter. The way the blood is splattered also suggests he was unable to move, yet struggled, flinging his head around before finally dying.

But such narrow-minded and intellectually lazy positions will surely be exposed—sooner rather than later—for the pretentious sham they truly are. For now, in the age of an utterly deranged industrialism, with a global system blatantly proclaiming as its organizing principle the pursuit at any cost of infinite growth in what to any sensible person is a very finite and fragile planet, the tyranny of humans over nature has acquired monstruous proportions. The colossal dimensions of animal exploitation by the industrial method and the death of one species after another grimly attest to that.

COMMENT BY PAUL DONOVAN—[WhatsLeft]

The Status Quo Never Knows Best

This quote sums up the violent opposition met by narrow-minded thinkers on this thread. We are destroying this planet at a rapacious rate, and animals are just as entitled to live in it as we are.

Moreover, you all think you can have your cake and eat it too, and go on living the American nightmare without an ounce of accountability.

I am a leftist, way further to the left than most of you, but I almost hope the Republicans win, just so you will learn your lesson that you can’t support mediocrity and get real results. The animal struggle is no different than the struggle against Bush. These problems of ignorance and mass stupidity are systemic, and the sooner you learn it, the better off we will all be.

To stand against global morality, equality for all (not just a select few as usual), and truth, is to be a reactionary.

Centrism is the problem!

•••

*Paul is here referring to a guy who taunted me by saying he owned TWO beaver hats and was mighty proud of that.—PG

Notes
(1) The precise figure is difficult to ascertain due to the immensity of human/non-human interactions of an exploitive kind, but 75bn creatures of all kinds is currently regarded as extremely conservative, especially now that growing affluence in China, South Korea and even Vietnam, have pushed the consumption of meat and other animal foods to new heights.