Mama Duck Adopts Orphaned Ducklings / Hackactivism may do some good, after all

 

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

 

 

Published on Apr 25, 2012

I found this mother duck and her 10 ducklings in my backyard swimming pool this morning. The mother, who has visited before with her mate, had no trouble getting out, but the ducklings were not able to climb out of the pool. My friend Brian and I spent more than an hour creating ramps on which the ducklings could climb out, but they refused to use them. Then Brian scooped up the ducklings with a pool net, but the mother stayed in the pool and the ducklings jumped back in to be with her. Finally, we put a ceramic turtle and some lava rocks from my fire pit on the top step of the pool and chased the mother in that direction. The mother jumped out, and the ducklings eventually figured out how to climb the turtle and rocks to safely escape.


Feel like doing more? Below a very useful piece we spotted on ANIMAL PEOPLE FORUM. Note the same applies to political activism in general.

Got an Hour? Here Are 6 Easy Ways to Help Animals Online

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s animal lovers, we often wish we could do more to help our fellow friends in need. But it can often feel like there isn’t enough time in the day to dedicate to making a real difference. Though it may seem this way, it isn’t necessarily the case. Given modern technology, there are all sorts of things that we as individuals can do in a short amount of time. A single click of your computer mouse has never been more powerful. If you ever find yourself with a spare hour, here are 6 easy ways to help animals online.

Sign online petitions

It’s upsetting to think about how much animal abuse goes on in the world, whether against domestic pets and livestock or wildlife and endangered species. Human interference is causing suffering and extinction on a massive scale. Signing petitions that bring these issues to light is just one way that you can make a difference for animals online.

Change.org and thepetitionsite.com are two popular petition platforms where you can sign existing petitions, and also create your own. These petitions can then be shared across your social media channels. While it may seem like an ‘armchair activist’ approach, every additional signature makes a difference. Consider the following:

  • To be searchable within WhiteHouse.gov, a petition must get 150 signatures in 30 days
  • To require a response, a petition must reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days

You could be one of those 150 or 100,000 signatures.

Shop using AmazonSmile

Most of us already shop online, whether it’s through Amazon or another site. If you’re using it anyway, you may as well make a positive difference at the same time. When you sign up with AmazonSmile, 0.5% of the purchase price goes to your selected charity at no extra cost to you. And there are many animal charities included in this list to choose from.  [Never mind that Amazon is in many ways an evil company that works hand in hand with the CIA and pays slave wages—these days the whole system is rigged like that and Amazon is everywhere. Extract a bit of good out of them, if you can. —Eds.]

In addition, there is iGive, which works in a similar way but without limiting you to Amazon.com. It’s arguably a preferable alternative, since there are over 1,400 affiliated stores, and it donates around 3% towards your chosen charity instead of just 0.5%. All of this is at no extra cost to you, the customer.

Donate your skills

Do you have something valuable to offer an animal welfare organization? Perhaps you’re the crafty type, capable of making toys and bedding for shelter pets. You could donate these to your local shelter, or alternatively sell them online and donate the profits. Shelters are often in need of volunteers with writing, web design, or social media skills who can help to update adoption profiles for pets in need of homes, among other things. Getting the word out online is one of the most important tasks in ensuring the success of these organizations, so even if you can only donate one hour per week, you could make a significant difference.

Spread the word on social media

Sharing animal abuse stories on social media in order to incite action can be tricky. On the one hand, of course it’s important to spread awareness so that people know what’s going on – and to shed light on the less well-known problems as well. Issues like deforestation often get far less attention than dog abuse, for example. On the other hand, constantly sharing petitions and fundraisers on your Facebook profile can sometimes have the opposite effect to the one intended.

Why? Because the fact is, most people don’t want to see this content on their news feeds. They come to social media for light entertainment – funny videos and weird memes – not to feel depressed about the sad plight of animals. Instead of sharing too much on your personal profile, consider creating a page or group where you can share content with like-minded people – not just your friends, but others as well. There are still opportunities to share with your personal community, but you need to pick your moments and do so in a measured and thoughtful way that won’t simply result in you being unfollowed.

Buy cruelty-free products

Whether we’re shopping online or offline, the products we choose to buy impact consumer demand and cast a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. If you love animals, you probably agree that they shouldn’t be tortured for the purposes of testing drugs and cosmetics. Yet in labs across the country, this is happening all the time – so that we can have shampoo, lip balms, and glitzy eyeliners. As if there weren’t enough options out there already.

PETA has a list of great cruelty-free companies that you can use to inform your purchasing decisions, including brands like Lush, Aveda, and Urban Decay. Likewise, Buzzfeed has a comprehensive guide to finding products: 186 Easy Ways To Buy Cruelty-Free And Vegan Beauty Products Online. We all need to be more aware of how our money is being spent, and subsequently the kind of world we’re funding in the process.

Check out our nine tips for shopping animal-free.

Fill out wildlife surveys

When the public gets involved with logging wildlife data, this can be a massive help to scientists working to promote conservation efforts. It takes very little time and can involve all sorts of activities, from keeping track of the native birds in your garden to laying down a white sheet and seeing how many different types of bugs are drawn to its glare. With handy apps like iNaturalist, you can even record and share wildlife sightings on your smartphone. Visit the National Biodiversity Network (or a local equivalent) to find a survey or scheme you can get involved with today.

While some might disparagingly call it ‘slacktivism’, getting involved in online activism is far better than doing nothing at all – and since we spend so much time online and using social media already, the Internet is increasingly the medium of choice for activists seeking to raise awareness and generate movements. Times are certainly changing, and each of us has the power to make a difference. There’s nothing stopping you from working your online magic and volunteering in the real world too. Let us know how you get on!


Kayleigh Alexandra is a content writer for Micro Startups — a site that donates all of its web revenue to charities supporting startups, entrepreneurs, and other worthy causes. Check out the blog for your latest dose of growth hacking news. Follow us on Twitter @getmicrostarted.


Featured image credit Daniel Frank / Pexels.

 


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The Russian Peace Threat examines Russophobia, American Exceptionalism and other urgent topics




(VIDEO) WORLD NEWS: Pope on Circuses, Animal Rights in Pakistan, and More!

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before reading our main essay, please join us in a moment of compassion and reflection.

The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering. Meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits in this regard.


Animal People Forum debuts biweekly news series current events that impact animals worldwide

WORLD NEWS: Pope on Circuses, Animal Rights in Pakistan, and More! (1/17/18)

 In this episode of Animal People World News, find out…

  • Why the U.K.’s foxhunting ban is here to stay
  • How the U.S. Interior Department is pushing its pro-hunting agenda
  • How China is implementing its new ban on ivory sales
  • How the last dancing bears in Nepal were rescued
  • Why Pope Francis promoted a circus convicted of animal cruelty
  • What a new Swiss law means for companion animals, lab animals, and crustaceans
  • How three Indian states are improving life for dairy cows
  • What Sindh’s new bill means for animal rights in Pakistan

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Greetings! I’m Wolf, like the animal, reporting for Animal People World News.

U.K. HUNTING BAN TO STAY, SAYS PRIME MINISTER

The United Kingdom’s 2004 ban on hunting with dogs will remain the law of the land, says Prime Minister Theresa May. May has in the past been a vocal supporter of foxhunting, and declared as a campaign promise prior to her June 2017 reelection that she would hold a vote to relegalize hunting with dogs. Although many Conservative party politicians are foxhunting enthusiasts, most U.K. citizens oppose the bloodsport, including nearly three quarters of Conservative voters. In abandoning her promise to try and repeal the ban, May suggested that her party’s past support for foxhunting might have been a factor in its recent electoral losses.

Although illegal, hunting foxes, hares, and other wild mammals with dogs remains common in the U.K. Trail hunting, a legal alternative in which hounds follow an artificially laid scent, is often used as cover for the hunting of actual animals. There were over four hundred and thirty prosecuted cases of illegal hunting between 2005 and 2017. Hunting birds with dogs remains legal, but increasingly controversial.

U.S. INTERIOR DEPT. PUSHES PRO-HUNTING AGENDA

Ryan Zinke, the United States Secretary of the Interior, announced on January ninth the creation of a new Hunting and Shooting Sports Conservation Council. The Council will advise the government on creating policies to expand hunting access, increase public support for hunting, and encourage more Americans to take up the practice.

Promoting hunting has been a major agenda item for Secretary Zinke ever since his appointment to the position by President Trump. His first day in office, Zinke signed an order to allow hunting with lead ammunition and fishing with lead tackle on public land, despite data showing that lead in the environment poisons millions of animals every year. He has declared October to be “National Hunting and Fishing Month.” In November 2017 he created the International Wildlife Conservation Council, whose duties include quote-unquote “educating” the public on the benefits of hunting, weakening legal protections for threatened species, and promoting trophy hunting overseas.

Zinke claims that “hunters and anglers are at the backbone of American conservation,” arguing that killing wild animals fosters appreciation for nature and provides essential funding for species and habitat protection. Yet his own department’s statistics show that while hunting has dwindled in popularity, non-violent wildlife watching and photography have become more popular than ever. With more than seven times more people watching wild animals than hunting them, Americans spent a total of one hundred and fifty-six billion dollars on wildlife activities in 2016, more than any other time in the previous twenty-five years.

IVORY BAN TAKES EFFECT IN CHINA

China’s ban on ivory sales, first announced December 2016, is now in full effect. After gradually shutting down factories and traders over the course of 2017, the Chinese government declared on New Year’s Eve that all sales of elephant ivory, including online, and imports from abroad would be illegal.

International commercial trading of ivory has been illegal under CITES, the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species, since 1989. However, the allowance of domestic sales within China has continued to fuel demand for ivory products, and to provide cover for the illegal killing of African elephants for the Chinese market.

The Chinese public seems generally to support the ban, with hashtags translating to “no sales, no killings” and “make ivory products commercial no more” trending on Chinese social media. However, the impact of the ban is unfortunately undercut by the persistence of legal markets in neighboring regions, which conservationists fear will continue to sustain ivory smuggling into China.

Hong Kong, which is governed autonomously from mainland China, isn’t scheduled to ban ivory until 2021. Japan, meanwhile, has now become the world’s new largest legal ivory market, and shows no sign of banning the trade. At the most recent CITES meeting, Japan defeated a proposal to ban all domestic ivory sales, joining forces with Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the European Union, which all profit from trophy hunting of elephants.

NEPAL RESCUE CLOSES CURTAIN ON BEAR DANCING

The cruel practice of bear dancing has now been eradicated in Nepal. The last known dancing bears in the country were rescued on December nineteenth, by Nepali police and activists from Jane Goodall Institute Nepal and World Animal Protection. The bears, a male named Rangila and female named Sridevi, are now under the care of Parsa National Park.

Dancing bears are taken from their mothers as cubs, often captured in the wild. They are controlled using ropes threaded through a piercing in their nose, taught to stand on their hind legs and shuffle by being placed on hot metal or coals, and have their claws and teeth broken off to ensure obedience.

Fortunately, the practice is now in steep decline. The last known dancing bears in India were surrendered to the organization Wildlife SOS in 2009, after a lengthy campaign to rescue and rehabilitate the animals and train their former owners for alternative professions.

Bear dancing still exists in Pakistan, where at least two hundred and twenty bears remain in captivity. Yet Pakistani officials are cracking down, and plan to eradicate the practice within the next five years. The last dancing bear in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, was rescued last September.

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY REMARKS

I would like to take a moment now to acknowledge the legacy of Martin Luther King, Junior, whose life is celebrated throughout the United States on January fifteenth. The movement to recognize the moral rights of animals builds on the precedents of historic struggles to establish and defend human rights, including the movement for racial justice of which Martin Luther King was a major leader, and which continues today with campaigns such as Black Lives Matter.

A compassionate world for animals of every species cannot be achieved without also securing freedom and justice for human beings, of every race, religion, gender, and orientation. At the same time, there cannot be true, lasting peace between humans so long as the cruel exploitation of other sentient beings is tolerated, simply because they are different from us. Human rights and animal rights do not conflict; they are mutually interdependent.

Thank you. We now return to our main program.

POPE PROMOTES CIRCUS WITH ANIMAL CRUELTY RECORD

On Thursday, January eleventh, Pope Francis paid for more than two thousand guests to attend the Medrano Circus in Rome. The Medrano Circus uses a wide variety of captive wild animals in its performances, including elephants, giraffes, camels, big cats, kangaroos, ostriches, parrots, reptiles, spiders, and scorpions. In July 2016, an Italian court found the circus’s director at the time guilty of animal cruelty, after investigations revealed animals kept confined in small, barren enclosures, exposed to extreme heat and cold, and exhibiting stress behaviors such as pacing and scratching.

The Vatican distributed free tickets to refugees, prisoners, homeless, and poor people, with the declared intent of showing the Church’s solidarity with the downtrodden. Yet the decision to support circus use of animals contradicts Pope Francis’ own teachings on compassion for all creatures. In his encyclical Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home, he declares:

“The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God… Every act of cruelty towards any creature is ‘contrary to human dignity.’”

The Pope’s circus patronage also goes against the shifting tide of public opinion. Just this month so far, the governments of Scotland and the U.S. state of New Jersey have both banned the use of wild animals in circuses, recognizing the inherent cruelty involved in forcing wild animals to perform for human amusement.

WELFARE STANDARDS IMPROVED FOR DAIRY COWS IN INDIA

Living conditions may soon improve for dairy cows in three Indian states. The governments of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Telangana have issued new guidelines to ensure higher welfare for dairy cows. These include providing soft bedding, access to the outdoors, and thorough vaccination against disease; banning or limiting the use of artificial hormones; preventing excessive milking; and recommending that calves stay with their mothers for at least three months, rather than being separated shortly after birth.

The new guidelines come in reaction to the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations’, or FIAPO’s, #EndExploitativeDairies campaign. FIAPO investigations have revealed cruelty and neglect in hundreds of dairy farms across India. Among the most gruesome practices is the use of khalbacchas, dead calves stuffed with hay, to keep mother cows lactating after their own young have died or been taken away. FIAPO hopes that the new protections for cows at the state level will pave the way for national legislation regulating dairy farms throughout India.

SINDH, PAKISTAN INTRODUCES ANIMAL RIGHTS BILL

Finally, animals in the province of Sindh, Pakistan may soon be granted basic legal rights. On December thirtieth, the governor’s cabinet introduced a new bill for consideration by Sindh’s house of representatives. If passed, the Sindh Welfare and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act would prohibit beating, neglecting, torturing, or frightening animals, as well as specific practices such as overloading draft animals or forcing animals to fight for entertainment. Violators would face sentences between three months and three years in prison.

In addition to improving animal welfare, the Act would also acknowledge animal rights, reading:

“[Animals] will be granted inalienable rights to adequate nourishment, appropriate shelter, and life in an environment free of abuse.”

Although laws regulating human treatment of animals are common worldwide, only a few recognize animals as having legal rights of their own. If the Sindh Welfare and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act is passed, the Pakistani province will join Switzerland, Germany, Spain, India, New Zealand, Argentina, and Colombia, becoming one of a small but growing number of jurisdictions to acknowledge that animals are sentient persons rather than mere objects to be used.


These are just a few of the countless issues affecting animals worldwide. Visit the Animal People Forum to find out more, and share your own perspectives on animal rights, welfare, and conservation.

Animal People is a non-profit charity, and this news program would not be possible without help from our donors. Visit our Patreon page to find out how you can support the production of future episodes, and gain access to a variety of exclusive rewards.

Thank you for your support, and for helping to create a kinder world for all living creatures!


About the Author
 

Born and raised within the animal rights movement, Wolf Gordon Clifton has always felt strongly connected to other creatures and concerned for their well-being. Beginning in childhood he contributed drawings of animals for publication in Animal People News, and traveled with his parents to attend conferences and visit animal projects all over the world. During high school he began writing for the newspaper and contributing in various additional ways around the Animal People office. His first solo trip overseas, to film a promotional video for the Bali Street Dog Foundation in Indonesia, led him to create the animated film Yudisthira's Dog, retelling the story of an ancient Hindu king famed for his loyalty to a street dog. It also inspired lifelong interests in animation and world religion, which he went on to study for college at Vanderbilt University. Wolf graduated in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies and minors in Film Studies and Astronomy. In 2015, he received a Master of Arts in Museology and Graduate Certificate in Astrobiology from the University of Washington. His thesis project, the online exhibit Beyond Human: Animals, Aliens, and Artificial Intelligence, brings together animal rights, astrobiology, and AI research to explore the ethics of humans' relationships with other sentient beings, and can be viewed on the Animal People Forum. His diverse training and life experiences enable him to research and write about a wide variety of animal-related issues, in a global context and across the humanities, arts, and sciences. In his spare time, he does paleontological work for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and writes for the community blog Neon Observatory. 



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