Category: Environment

Legitimate anger.

What a greedy, selfish race of people we can be at times!

I’m writing about the subject of elephants.  Or, to put it more precisely and distastefully, the murder of elephants. For the ivory in their tusks.

The post was prompted by a recent item over on Chris Snuggs’ blog Nemo Insula Est.  Chris and I have known each other for quite a few years now; since the time that he was Head of Studies at the French college, ISUGA, in Quimper, France and where I attended as a visiting teacher running a class on Sales & Marketing.

Chris has allowed me to republish the piece in full.  Please read today’s post and then come back tomorrow to see in what ways we can all help.

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The Human Shame in Northern Kenya

03JAN

One of my NYRs was to stop reading bad news, but that lasted about 6 hours ….. there is of course so much of it, and so much that is utterly depressing. One of the first of 2014 was an article in “The Independent”:

Elephant Appeal: Few are willing to say just how bad the poaching crisis is – the elephant population may easily fall into terminal decline

Tragic, to the extreme!
Tragic, to the extreme!

You can get all the details from the article – which is pretty harrowing, with surviving elephants described as being “stricken with grief” as they cluster round their slaughtered brethren – but basically, elephants in the Tsavo East National Park in Northern Kenya are under threat of extinction from poachers from Somalia. This provoked a number of reactions on my part:

DEMAND

  • The price of ivory depends on the demand and supply. The former is very strong and apparently rising, especially in China. For extraordinarily moronic and selfish reasons, ivory is considered artistic and – for example – tiger and rhinoceros parts medicinal and/or possessing aphrodysiac properties.
  • Can China really do NOTHING to stop this cultural abomination? People in the west for the most part stopped acquiring ivory years ago.
  • If China – and other Asia nations – cannot or will not do anything, should the west not apply more pressure? Same applies of course to China’s support of North Korea. YES, sanctions are painful, but nothing NON-painful is likely to work.

THE POACHERS

  • They are execrable, of course …… and yet, many may be extremely poor, and indeed ignorant. There is no excuse in the strictest sense, but it may to some extent be understandable if they see a chance to make several years’ normal income in a single day. This is no different from City bankers, or indeed the Enron directors and many others: greed is sadly rampant on our planet.
  • But  the poachers are not only ignorant and destitute farmers: terrorists are now apparently turning to the ivory trade, too.
  • There are insufficient funds to patrol the parks properly. Kenya is just one more corrupt African state where politicians earn a fortune while basic needs and services are severely underfunded.

MORALITY

I always wonder what if anything goes through the minds of those who spend these obscene sums on frippery and personal self-glorification. Do they ever think that their money could do immense good elsewhere? Would WE be just the same in their shoes?

Is there any solution to this greed?

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Chris wrote his post motivated by the article in The Independent UK newspaper.  But that newspaper was not alone in promulgating the despicable killings of these smart and magnificent creatures.  Here’s a story that was in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper a year ago.

Horror as entire family of elephants slaughtered for ivory

Armed wildlife rangers on Tuesday night fanned out across eastern Kenya in pursuit of ivory poachers who killed an entire family of 12 elephants in the country’s worst single such slaughter since the 1980s.

By , Nairobi

5:26PM GMT 08 Jan 2013

Eleven adults and one infant calf died in a “targeted and efficient” attack highlighting the growing professionalism of poachers bankrolled by international criminals supplying soaring demand for ivory in the Far East.

Six of the animals lay in one heap, their tusks hacked out with machetes.

None of the family group managed to flee further than 300 yards before they were gunned down and their ivory removed.

The calf, less than a year old, is believed to have been crushed by its dying mother as she fell to the ground.

“It is unimaginable, a heinous, heinous crime,” said Paul Udoto, spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

“We have not seen such an incident in recent memory, it’s the worst single loss that we have on record, and our records go back almost 30 years.

“These were professional killers. The attack was targeted and efficient.”

The poachers, armed with automatic rifles, had already fled but there were hopes last night that a massive search involving foot patrols, a dozen vehicles and three aircraft could still find them.

“Every possible resource is being deployed to track down these criminals,” Mr Udoto said. “They will feel the full force of the law.”

But the area where the elephants were killed, in the north of Kenya’s largest wildlife reserve, Tsavo East National Park, is sparsely populated, has few roads, and lies close to Kenya’s border with Somalia.

Privately, conservationists said they feared the poachers and their haul of 22 tusks, worth an estimated GBP175,000 on the Asian market, would already have escaped.

The attack was the latest in a surge of elephant deaths that has seen the number of the animals killed for their ivory in Kenya increase sevenfold in five years, from fewer than 50 in 2007 to 360 in 2012, according to KWS figures.

The increase has led many wildlife experts to declare the current situation a crisis worse even than the mass slaughter of Africa’s elephants in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to a global ivory trade ban in 1989.

I don’t have permission to republish the article so please go here and read the full piece and view a couple of harrowing photographs.

Then come back tomorrow and explore how you and I can do something to help. Please.

Picture parade twenty-four.

The first of the New Year and dedicated to Sue of Sue Dreamwalker.

A week ago, Sue left a nice comment about our ‘backyard’ here in Oregon. Specifically with regard to the two photographs of deer feeding in front of the house.  I replied by saying that today I would offer a selection of views of our property.

First off, an aerial view with the property boundary line overlaid, taken from the sale particulars.  The right-hand, Eastern boundary follows the edge of Hugo Road. We are some four miles from Merlin in Southern Oregon.

Thirteen acres orientated West-East.
Thirteen acres orientated West-East.

The solid blue line is the course of Bummer Creek that flows from top to bottom of the image.  The thin, dotted blue line is the driveway that runs from Hugo Road up to the house, a distance of a 1/4 mile.  The house is close to the Western boundary almost hidden from sight in this picture by the trees.  There is a faint label ‘The House’ just below the building.

From left to right: Pharaoh, Sweeny, Cleo and Hazel.

The above photograph was taken from a point about half-way along the driveway, the house being behind the camera.  Ahead, the driveway dips down to cross the bridge over the Creek, as the following picture reveals.  Luckily the boundary fence is dog-proof!

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Dogs and water!
Dogs and water!

Pharaoh in Bummer Creek just downstream of the bridge.

Looking farther downstream from the bridge.
Looking further downstream from the bridge.

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Looking upstream from the bridge.
Looking upstream from the bridge.

The barrier across the Creek seen in the upper half of the photograph is a flood irrigation dam installed many years ago, presumably for agricultural purposes before the plot was sold for house building prior to 1977. One installs an iron pole on a centre bolt embedded in the dam and then places a stout plank across the flow on top of the dam.  The plank can just be seen to the right of the dam, resting on the bank.  Never tried the dam but going to some day!

Looking to the West up towards the house.
Looking to the West up towards the house.

The above picture was taken close to where the previous one was shot.  Simply by swinging around to the left and looking back up.  The house is barely visible in the background behind the metal gate and wooden fence posts in the middle of the photograph.

Corinne's field visible through the trees and undergrowth.
Corinne’s field visible through the trees and undergrowth.

Again, the picture above is taken not far removed from where the previous two were taken.  If one looks at the aerial view of the property in the first picture, in the top-right corner there is a small area of grassland; what would have been an offshoot of our neighbour’s grassland in previous times.  After my sister, Corinne, died in the Summer of 2013 we named that area of grassland Corinne’s field.

A general view down over the main area of grass.
A general view down over the main area of grass.

So now we are back standing just outside the Eastern side of the house looking South-East out over the main area where the dogs are walked twice a day.  The picture was taken a little before noon and shows the low mist that has been with us for about two weeks.

Nature's beauty.
Nature’s beauty.

Above, another photograph picking up on the mist that has been with us for some days.  Until yesterday!

This is what I call a Winter day!
This is what I call a Winter day!

Yesterday dawned cold, clear and frosty. As this picture of one of our tall pine trees so vividly demonstrates.  (The tree edges our driveway, about half-way to the house.)

So will close today’s post with three more pictures of a frosty Saturday morning in Merlin, Oregon, USA.

A frosty yet sunny morning.
A frosty yet sunny morning.

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Frost on a bamboo tree.
Frost on a bamboo tree.

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It really is a beautiful world at times.
It really is a beautiful world at times.

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So there you are, Sue!

Needless to say, Jean and I are reminded almost daily how lucky we and all our animals are at finding such a beautiful place to live.  I can’t ever imagine taking it for granted.

Footnotes.

Where we are today?

On New Year’s Day I published the first part of a film called Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream.  Then yesterday came the second part.  I found it a remarkable film.  Because, while the first part reminded the viewer of the list, the long list, of things that are wrong with these present times, the second part highlighted the many currents of positive changes that are taking place here and now.

Without hope there is nothing.
Without hope there is nothing.

The film is available to watch on Top Documentary Films and here is the introduction offered in that place.

Of all the innumerable beliefs and hypotheses that make up our contemporary industrial perspective on life there is one that is dominant and very frequent. That’s the assumption that we are disconnected, from everyone and everything. This belief configures basically all our ideas and actions. There’s a crucial fallacy that we are separate. But, if there is only one, then whatever I do to you I’m actually doing it to myself, my family, and my children.

Spiritual attitude has long instructed that partition is actually an illusion. However, in the past, the narrative that’s been exchanged in the modern world, whether consciously or unconsciously, has been that the world functions like a huge machine made of separate parts like a big clock. For the past four centuries, the scientific established practice has been trying to take the clock apart, and figure out how it functions, so we can use it for our own ambitions.

This rigid aspect meant that instead of realizing the relation between things, we were analyzing and taking apart those very same things. So, what developed was kind of disintegrated view of the natural world. And we became entranced with the ability that came out of this technology, and we lost our relations to each other; we lost our connection to the enigma of the cosmos.

Although the modern worldview is superior on Earth, it’s valuable to identify that it’s not the only worldview. Traditional, native cultures are not so concentrated on “advancement”, rather they’re focused on their health and persistence of the community, and they see the interdependence of all things. They try to recognize that we’re related to everything… to the animals, fish, plants, trees, birds, and even to the microorganisms. Indigenous people of the world have a particularly important role to play at this moment in history. We need them to come forward and explain how they see things.

The film was produced by the Pachama Alliance, an organisation I hadn’t come across before.  Their website is here and on the About page one learns:

Purpose

The Pachamama Alliance, empowered by our partnership with indigenous people, is dedicated to bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet.   Our unique contribution is to generate, and engage people everywhere in, transformational conversations and experiences consistent with this purpose. We weave together indigenous and modern worldviews such that human beings are in touch with their dignity and are ennobled by the magnificence, mystery and opportunity of what is possible for humanity at this time.   We are here to inspire and galvanize the human family to generate a critical mass of conscious commitment to a thriving, just and sustainable way of life on Earth. This is a commitment to transforming human systems and structures that separate us, and to transforming our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the natural world.

If you have read this post so far, then you will enjoy this video. More than enjoy it; you will find it inspiring and liberating.

Another organisation mentioned in the film was Bioneers, also not previously known to me.  Their website is here. The organisation describes itself, in part:

Collective Heritage Institute – Bioneers is a non-profit New Mexico corporation founded in 1990 by Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons. The overarching mission of Bioneers is the advancement of holistic education pertaining to global social, cultural and environmental issues. Bioneers identifies progressive yet nature-honoring solutions to rising challenges of instability, inequality, and unsustainable growth and disseminates this knowledge via independent media, events, and community action networks.

There is much on these two websites to offer hope.

The Pain and the Hope, continued.

Part Three of reflections on where we are today.

Those of you who watched Part One of Awakening the Dreamer that was published yesterday could be excused for thinking that it was a very gloomy window on our world at the start of 2014.

Park those feelings and watch Part Two.

The Hope

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/52496263]

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Tomorrow, Friday, I will complete this run of four days by dropping in on a few of the organisations named in these films plus a few other items.

The Pain and the Hope

Part Two of reflections on where we are today.

First things first!

A very Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones!

Yesterday (I’m tempted to write last year!), I posted a little tale about the donkey in the well; essentially a message about being happy.

My original plan for today was to post a series of photographs of some animals next door that our neighbours, Larry and Janell, have recently adopted.

But then Jean and I watched a documentary two evenings ago that had us both spellbound. The documentary, Awakening the Dreamer, consisted of two 45-minute films.  The first highlighting the precarious nature of our present times.  The second showing the accelerating pace of people all across the world actively changing things for the better.  Hence the title of the post The Pain and the Hope.

So here’s Part One.   I do so hope you can find the time to watch it.

The Pain

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Approaching the New Year!

Part One of reflections on where we are today.

Depending on just where in the world you are, the New Year of 2014 is anything from a few to twenty-four hours away.  How that year turns out will, to a very great extent, depend on millions and millions of behaviours.  In other words, the behavioural choices each of us makes. Because, as millions of us already understand, our world on this, our only, Planet is facing changes potentially beyond our imagination.  Caring for our Planet and all of life upon it is meaningless without those behavioural choices being the right ones for our Planet.

A couple of days ago, I read the following on Facebook.  It seemed an appropriate tale for the start of 2014.

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Now what?
Now what?

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL :

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

  1. Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.
  2. Free your mind from worries – Most never happens.
  3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
  4. Give more.
  5. Expect less from people but more from yourself.

You have two choices … smile and close this page, or pass this along to someone else to share the lesson.

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Part Two of these reflections is tomorrow.

A very Happy New Year to you.

We must rewild!

It sounds counter-intuitive but it may be the only way forward.

Regular visitors to Learning from Dogs will know that from time to time I refer to the essays of George Monbiot. I was recently browsing Mr. Monbiot’s website and learnt that in July 2013 he gave a TED Talk on Rewilding.  It was called: For more wonder, rewild the world.

Here is that talk.  Do watch it first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rZzHkpyPkc

Published on Sep 9, 2013

Wolves were once native to the US’ Yellowstone National Park — until hunting wiped them out. But when, in 1995, the wolves began to come back (thanks to an aggressive management program), something interesting happened: the rest of the park began to find a new, more healthful balance. In a bold thought experiment, George Monbiot imagines a wilder world in which humans work to restore the complex, lost natural food chains that once surrounded us.

The talk reminded me that a couple of months ago Patrice Ayme published an essay called REWILDING US.  With Patrice’s permission that essay is republished here in full.

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REWILDING US.

REALITY IS WILD & FEROCIOUS. IGNORING IT IS INHUMAN.

And Presents A Civilizational Risk.

Princeton is freaking out. Flesh devouring aliens are lurking out in the woods, threatening academia’s fragile thoughts. Krugman:

‘From the Princeton Town Topics, which used to be all about (a) parking (b) deer:

A growing population of coyotes in the wooded area bordering the Institute for Advanced Study has motivated the Princeton Animal Control Advisory Committee to recommend that sharpshooters be hired to help handle the problem. “There is a big pack over at the Institute Woods,” officer Johnson said this week. “I’m having a lot of complaints that they follow people around.”‘

You Can’t Always Eat Who You Want

The “Mountain Lion”, is a relative of the Cheetah (erroneously put in the cat family, felis, until last year or so). It has 40 names, in English alone, and is found from the American Arctic to Patagonia, from the sea shore to the high mountains. The weight above is that of the female. Males are heavier (typically up to 100 kilograms). The heaviest puma shot in Arizona was 300 pounds (136 kilos).

The lion/cougar/puma is capable of jumping up twenty feet from a standstill (yes, 6 meters; horizontally, 14 meters). It is capable of killing a grizzly (pumas and ‘golden bears’ were famous for their naturally occurring furious fights to death in California). The feline’s crafty method consisted of jumping on top of the bear, and blinding him with furious pawing. Top speed: 50 mph, 80 km/h. (By the way, there used to be pure cheetahs in North America, recently exterminated by man. I propose to re-install the Asian cheetah in the USA, in a sort of cheetah diplomacy with Iran.)

The philosophical question here is: what is this world all about? Is it about living on our knees, or ruling among animals and wilderness?

Why would Princeton panic about small canids? Because they don’t obey the established order?

Coyotes are totally clever, and not at all dangerous (being so clever). They have very varied voices, when in packs. Going out and shooting them is really primitive, and misses the main point of having nature around. That is: to teach humility, and teach the richness of our planet, visit hearts with emotional diversity, and minds with complexity.

Bears and Mountain Lions are a completely different matter. They are both extremely clever too, but can be very dangerous.

Running and hiking in the Sierra, I got charged by scary bears several times. I view this dangerosity as a plus, but it never loses my mind, and I got scared nearly out my wits more than once.

Once, in a national Park on the coast, I literally ran into two large lions in 30 minutes! Then I got charged by a large elk before he realized I was not a lion. Other high notes were finding a bear cub on the trail in the near vertical mountain side, on the way down, as dusk was coming.

Another high point was the large bear by the trail, who was lying like a bear rug, at 9pm, in an apparent ruse to let me approach until he could jump at his prey, as he did, before realizing that I was not a deer, something that obviously infuriated him. He was torn between making the human into dinner, and the instinct that this would turn badly for him.

In Alaska I was charged by a moose with her progeny… although I did not go as fast as an experienced mountain biker who happened to be there too, the anti-grizzly cannister in my hand emboldened me to succeed in a circuitous move  to proceed towards my distant destination, something facilitated by the calf’s crash into some obstacle, drawing his mother’s concern. Mountain running often requires to proceed, no matter the obstacles in the way, when one is too far to turn around.

Bears know rocks, they have been hurt by them, and so they fear airborn rocks (throw the rock on something noisy, to impress; I had to hit, with a very large rock, a charging bear directly, once; it fled; it was killed by rangers later after he caused a flesh wound to somebody else; some will find all this very violent; well, it is, that’s part of the whole point).

Mountain Lions are better charged and/or, roared or barked at. They fear insane behavior.

In general making lots of noise helps, with bears and lions. I don’t have clever tricks to suggest for bathing safely in the murky icy Pacific. Although I assume that the presence of sea lions bobbing on the surface placidly is indicative of the absence of an obvious white shark prowling… In any case the Pacific is so cold, you will probably die of cardiac arrest before you are devoured.

In Africa, there are about 500,000 elephants. 25,000 to 30,000 are killed, a year, to send the ivory to east Asia (China, Vietnam). So African elephants may disappear. This is beyond tragic, it’s irreplaceable. Elephants understand people’s gestures, without any learning (they apparently learn to use trunk gestures among themselves). One is talking about extremely intelligent animals here. (In contrast, chimpanzees have great difficulties understanding human gestures.)

Intelligence and culture are dominant among apex mammals. That’s what makes them so superior. Washington State had the smart idea to shoot full grown adult male mountain lions. Thus mountain lion society and culture collapsed, uneducated teenagers took over, and incidents with humans exploded (something about the quiet macho society!).

A Japanese specialist of chimpanzee intelligence who happens to have a bear in his lab, found that the bear did not underperform chimpanzees on mental tasks (that’s actually a problem with bears; being so clever, they can be unpredictable, one can never know what they have up their sleeve, like the one who mimicked a bear rug, above, or one who drove a car in Tahoe). A number of social mentally advanced animals (sea mammals, parrots) use advanced languages.

So what are my recommendations? The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies ought to realize that, if it wants to become really brainy, it ought to give our fellow species a chance. They are part of what make our minds, in full.

Elephants and rhinoceroses used to be all over Europe and North America. They ought to be re-introduced right away, using Indian and African species (rare camels too; later, thanks to genetic engineering, part of those could be replaced by re-engineered ancient species, such as the Mammoth). Lions and leopard-like species ought to be reintroduced too.

It can work: in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an impressive population of mountain lions.  I had many close calls (in the most recent incident, a few weeks ago, a lion peed an enormous and dreadfully smelling amount on a trail I was making a loop on, obviously to show me he owned the territory, a total wilderness reserve a few miles from Silicon Valley… especially at dusk).

However, the lions are extremely good at avoiding people (although one got killed by police in downtown Berkeley in the wee hours of the morning). They will all be collared in the next ten years, to find out what is going on. With modern technology (collars!) and sophisticated human-animal culture, there is no reason why extremely dangerous, but clever species could not live in reasonable intelligence with humans.

So rewilding is possible. It’s also necessary. Why? So we humans can recover our hearts, and our minds.

Whether we like it or not, we are made for this wild planet. By forgetting how wild it is, by shooting it into submission, we lose track of the fact human life, and civilization itself, are much more fragile than they look.

And thus, by turning our back to the wilds, we lose track of what reality really is. Worse: we never discover all what our minds can be, and how thrilling the universe is. We are actually bad students who refuse to attend the most important school, that taught by reality itself.

Rewilding is necessary, not just to instill a mood conducive to saving the planet, but also to remake us in all we are supposed to be.

Expect Evil, And Don’t Submit.

These are the times when, once again, the plutocratic phenomenon is trying to take over. That’s when the few use the methods of Pluto to terrorize and subjugate the many (to constitute what is variously named an elite, oligarchy, or “nomenklatura“, or aristocracy, that is, a plutocracy).

And how is that possible? Because the many have been made into a blind, stupid, meek herd (I refer to Nietzsche for the condemnation of the herd mentality).

How do we prevent that? Nietzsche advocated the mentality of the “blonde beast“. That meant the lion (and not what the Nazis claimed it was; few were as anti-Nazi as Nietzsche). Why lion? Because lions are domineering. I learned in Africa that one could go a long way with wild lions, as long as one gave them respect, and time to get out of the way. However, disrespecting a lion means death.

Lions don’t accept to live on their knees. When abominable forces from the giant Persian theocratic plutocracy put the tiny Athenian democracy in desperate military situations, Athenians fought like lions. And democracy won.

Yet, 150 years later, when fascist, plutocratic, but apparently not as abominable, Macedonian forces put Athens in a difficult situation, Athenians surrendered. They did not fight like lions. Democracy would not come back to Athens for 23 centuries (and only thanks to the European Union).

We will not defeat plutocracy if we do not rewild ourselves. First: Let there be lions.

***

Patrice Ayme

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Yet something else we need to learn from dogs.

Photograph taken 25th April, 2012.
Photograph taken 25th April, 2012.

The above photograph was taken of young Cleo, just fifteen months old, showing that her innate skills of being in the wild were alive and well, despite thousands of years of dogs being domesticated animals.  Ergo, humans could manage just as well.

Picture parade twenty-three.

A bit of a compilation for today.

First, a few more of those ‘senior moment’ cartoons continuing from last Sunday.

Sen10

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Sen11

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Now two pictures taken on Christmas Day of a young deer feeding on cob that we put out daily.

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Then animal greetings to you all …

Birthday girl30001

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Finally, enjoy this short video sent to me by Dan Gomez.

These boots aren’t made for walking.

The trials of Steve Marsh

This is worthy of support.

Some seven days ago, there was an item on Permaculture News about Steve Marsh’s fight with Monsanto.  Here is that article in full.  I strongly recommend watching the longer video at the end of the post.  It’s an incredibly important issue for all lovers of healthy food.

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Help This Farmer Stop Monsanto’s GM Canola

Posted December 20, 2013 by  & filed under GMOs.

You might not have heard of Steve Marsh yet but this man could lose everything to protect your right to eat GM-free food.

Who is Steve Marsh?

Steve Marsh is an Australian farmer who lost his organic certification when Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) canola blew onto his farm from a neighbouring property in 2010. Since then, Steve lost most of his income and has been struggling to get his organic certification back.

Monsanto has a no liability agreement with GM farmers that prevent them from being sued. The only avenue Steve had to protect his livelihood was to take his neighbour to court. It is due to start on the 10th February 2014 in the Western Australian Supreme Court and is scheduled to run for three weeks.

Donate Now to Support Steve!

A landmark case for a GM-free future

This is the world’s first case of an organic farmer using the courts to recover loss and damages from a GM farmer. This case has been described as a landmark case to determine who should take responsibility in case of GM contamination. If Steve wins it will set a precedent to guide the application of common law to GM contamination and will be of interest to lawmakers worldwide.

We don’t want to be part of the global GM experiment underway with barely tested, unlabeled and uncontrolled GM foods infiltrating our food supplies. When people like Steve stand up for their rights in spite of what he may lose, it gives us a chance to stand alongside him.

Take action!

Steve’s neighbour is well supported and well funded by a pro-GM organization and we are helping to raise funds and awareness for Steve’s case.

Have a look at the short video above explaining his story and share it with friends, family and work colleagues. Please make a donation to support this landmark case and protect the future of GM-free food.

Donate Now to Support Steve!

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Jean and I have made a donation.  We hope you can find your way to supporting this campaign.

This is the longer version of that video above.

Animal rights.

This cougar was looking for love.

I forget how I came across this editorial in the Chicago Tribune but it was published a month ago, to the day.  What is more to the point is that the editorial was inspiring and I vowed to republish it.  With the absence of any formal permission to republish the editorial I thought it best to leave it for a few weeks.  When you read it you will realise just why it needed to be shared with you.

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Editorial: The cougar killed in Illinois was looking for love

ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCESThis cougar was shot last week by a state conservation officer in Whiteside County. The animal needn’t really have been killed.
ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES.
This cougar was shot last week by a state conservation officer in Whiteside County. The animal needn’t really have been killed.

He was lean, athletic and had traveled hundreds of miles, most likely from the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. He had attacked no one as he passed hundreds of towns and many more farms, each of them a lethal threat to his mission. Yet for lack of a better wildlife management plan in Illinois, the young cougar couldn’t get past a conservation officer armed with a state-issued rifle.

The necropsy says the cougar killed last week as he hid near Morrison, 130 miles west of Chicago, died of gunfire. In truth he died of official neglect: Even though more cougars and possibly wolves likely will be visiting Illinois, state lawmakers and the Department of Natural Resources haven’t forged policies that could allow the tranquilization, capture and survival of animals whose ancestors blissfully roamed the Midwest long before humans intruded on their turf.

Given his hunting skills, the young male could have homesteaded anywhere in the Upper Midwest and dined on the bountiful deer population for the rest of his life. Instead, his four huge paws carried out the imperative that drove him: With larger, older males driving him away from the females on their home ranges, this cougar came looking for love.

A farmer called authorities to report a large cat running from a cornfield toward his farmstead and, sure enough, a responding conservation officer found the cat under a corncrib, probably hiding until darkness would allow it to flee.

We won’t second-guess the officer, who consulted with law enforcement and wildlife personnel before killing the cougar. That said, this was an outcome that didn’t have to be. A magnificent creature might well be headed back to South Dakota if Illinois had learned lessons after Chicago police shot and killed a cornered cougar in the Roscoe Village neighborhood five years ago.

What all of us, legislators included, have to understand is that the return of feline or canine predators to their traditional realms doesn’t mean the animals want to hurt anyone. Even as this episode unfolded, millions of National Geographic readers were receiving the magazine’s December issue, with an 18-page spread: “Ghost Cats … Cougars are quietly reclaiming lost ground.” The relevant passage: “Cougars have attacked humans on about 145 occasions in the U.S. and Canada since 1890. Just over 20 of those assaults — an average of one every six years — proved fatal.”

Yet in this case, with an animal that had threatened no one while bypassing thousands of Midwesterners, a DNR spokesman rationalized that, “Public safety is what we’ll make the decision on every time.” The rest of DNR’s explanation is similarly lame: The department otherwise would have had to find someone to capture and move the animal. This officer thought the situation too unsafe to call a veterinarian to tranquilize the cat. Conservation officers don’t carry tranquilizer guns. That thinking led the DNR to the specious excuse that if the officer had shot the cougar with the wrong dosage of tranquilizer, the animal could have been harmed or killed accidentally. That excuse evokes the February 1968 explanation from a U.S. major to an Associated Press correspondent about the Vietnamese provincial city of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

We were struck by sensible comments last week from Bruce Patterson, curator of mammals at Chicago’s Field Museum, who wonders why this animal had to be shot when it evidently was hiding during daylight and hadn’t threatened anyone: “It’s possible to manage wildlife while still keeping it around.”

When we editorialize about humans slaying wild predators, some readers say our concern should be — as it constantly is — directed instead to the needless killings of young people, and not toward one lost, probably frightened animal.

Fair enough, although it’s possible to think about both. Just as we know there will be more homicides, we know that more big predators likely are coming to Illinois. So we’ll look back to what we expressed after the 2008 killing of the cougar in Roscoe Village: We hope Illinois comes away from last week’s episode with more than one dead cougar and a communal sadness. Illinois should develop a reliable protocol that errs on the side of trying to preserve the life of the lost animal — not of making the ad hoc decision to kill it and then resolving the ambiguities in favor of that decision.

That’s what happened here. A logical first step now: Give cougars protection under the Illinois Wildlife Code; they lack that protection now only because there is no known breeding population in this state. But with trail cameras capturing photos of one or more cougars in Jo Daviess, Morgan, Pike and Calhoun counties last fall, the animals evidently are re-establishing themselves in a state where they haven’t been known to live since 1870. In recent years, wolves have dipped into Jo Daviess, the state’s northwest corner. A black bear even visited there, evidently for a few days.

Lawmakers, DNR officials, you can do better. So can the rest of us, first by using sites such as cougarnet.org to offset our visceral fear with scientific knowledge.

Wild animals roam this state. Always have and, we hope, always will. As we urged here in 2008: The same Illinois that was unprepared for the last cougar had better get ready for the next. He’s probably en route.

ooOOoo

As you contemplate your New Year resolutions for 2014 please resolve to protect our animals.