Tag: Lion

Interconnectedness

All and every thing is connected on Planet Earth.

I must share the feelings of millions of others across the world when I admit to going through periods of quiet despair about where ‘modern man’ has got himself. (I don’t intend to be gender specific!)

It goes way beyond the disbelief at some of the things happening today; way beyond the anger that is generated by so many examples of greed and corruption.  It goes to a point where I just want to snuggle down with Jean, curl up with the dogs and kiss the rest of the world good-bye!

The expression that comes to mind is the one about the last person to leave the planet please switch the lights off!

(As if to demonstrate how sensitive dogs are to the feelings of us humans, Cleo just came into the room where I am writing this and laid her head across my left thigh.  I stroked her head and then she wandered back to our bed next door – I then took the following photograph)

P1120525

So what’s feeding my feelings?

Well, as many of you know yesterday and Sunday had posts about saving the Ecuadorian Jaguar and the African Lion.  In the case of the former, it’s:

The president of Ecuador claims to stand for indigenous rights and the environment, but he has just come up with a new plan to bring oil speculators in to 4 million hectares of jungle.  (That’s 9.9 million acres in old money!)

In the case of the African Lion, it’s:

In the past fifty years, the African lion population declined by as much as 90%. Many of the lion prides that do exist today are so genetically weak from being small and isolated by international borders that they can’t promise a future for African lions ….. two thirds of the African lions killed by trophy hunters end up in the U.S. That’s thousands of lions!

Last Friday I wrote about how community living for wolves and dogs had given those species “group survival and well-being“ that we humans couldn’t even dream about.

Then over at Liberated Way, Alex Jones recently wrote:

I attended a lecture at Essex University Colchester last Wednesday on the plight of indigenous indians in Canada, specifically those in Labrador. The Canadian government has embarked on a scheme to disenfranchise the indians of all their land, wipe out all their rights forever, and place them in perpetual bondage. Underlying this horror was what has happened to the indians themselves, a people tainted with mental illness, alcoholism and high suicide rates.

I asked the lecturer why it is that it appears all indigenous people across the globe share this common trait of high levels of abuse, mental illness, suicide and alcoholism. The answer given was that outsiders desired to force their alien world views upon these people destroying their sense of personal identity. For example many of these people see land as a shared resource, the capitalist ideas of land ownership is at odds with their world view. All Native American problem solving is through talking, and everyone has choice, whereas outsiders prefer to impose solutions and intellectualise with clever words.

Just read that last paragraph carefully again and note “outsiders desired to force their alien world views upon these people destroying their sense of personal identity.”

Back closer to home, the struggles of the North American Indians are well-known.

So no nice, neat solution to this place that I’m in just now other than to put down my pen and let the music from the following two videos wash over me.

If you read this far, thank you for suffering the ramblings of this silly old fart!

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Staying with the African Lion

Listing African Lions as an endangered species – you have until 11:59 pm Eastern Time today to so do.

african lions

Yesterday, at 08:25 Pacific Standard Time, I published a second post under the title of  “Yet another vital cause – the African Lion“.

Rather than repeat the plea to support the petition please go here and do all you can to “Save African lions from extinction by listing them as an endangered species.”  As that petition explains:

We’ve lost more than 80-90% of the world’s lion population in recent decades due to massive habitat loss, disease, trophy hunters and the exotic animal trade. Two thirds of lion trophies have ended up in the United States over the last ten years! If listed as endangered, hunters will no longer be able to bring lion trophies into the US therefore saving a large number of the lion population.This is our chance to give these iconic animals the protections they need before they disappear forever.

We only have until the end of the day on Monday, January 28th to tell the government we support endangered species protections for lions!

Please sign my petition in support of listing lions under the Endangered Species Act. Once you’ve signed, I also encourage you to leave a comment on the official proposal at https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/11/27/2012-28310/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-90-day-finding-on-a-petition-to-list-the-african-lion#table_of_contents You will find the comment area on the upper right hand of the page.

To pick up on the deadline again, from that Federal Register website one can read this:

To allow us adequate time to conduct this review, we request that we receive information on or before January 28, 2013. The deadline for submitting an electronic comment using the Federal eRulemaking Portal (see ADDRESSES section, below) is 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on this date [my emphasis].

So the deadline is as follows:

11:59 pm USA Eastern Time

10:59 pm USA Central Time

9:59 pm USA Mountain Time

8:59 pm USA Pacific Time

4:59 am on the 29th UK time

You don’t have to be resident in the USA in order to sign the petition.

Thank you, good people!
Thank you, good people!

Nature, red in tooth and claw

The Daily Mail newspaper offers an amazing story.

I am indebted to the website Naked Capitalism for including in their ‘links’ on the 25th July, this story from the online version of the Daily Mail UK newspaper.

Locked in combat: Mother lion takes on deadly crocodile to give cubs safe swim across river

Scanning the surface of the water, her amber eyes alight upon a threat to her pride – a deadly crocodile lurking in the river that the family of lions must cross.

The fiercely protective lioness did not hesitate, leaping into the water and grappling with the reptile to allow the rest of the pride to cross the river in safety.

These images show the magnificent big cat fastening her front legs around the crocodile’s jaws and dunking it underneath the water before making a break for the river bank at the Okavanga Delta in Botswana.

The lioness’ brave diversion tactics were witnessed by wildlife photographer Pia Dierickx, who said the creature moved with such incredible speed she did not realise what had happened until she looked back at the pictures on her camera.

The photographer, from Antwerp in Belgium, had been peacefully observing the lioness and her pride going about their business around the river when the sudden clash between the big cat and the crocodile occurred.

The 48-year-old said the struggle took place within one second.

The images are powerful and stunning.  I’m going to take the liberty of reproducing just one, as below, but do go across to the story here and view the full set of photographs taken by Pia Dierickx – you will not be disappointed!

Struggle: The power and strength of the mighty lioness is clear to see, but the crocodile fights back, clamping its teeth around the big cat’s nose. Image is Copyright © Pia Dierickx/BNPS

Finally, to the quote that I used as the title for today’s Post.  The origin of the quotation revealed here.