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Anti-bullfighting president Gustavo Petro wins 12-year political battle
BOGOTA, Colombia––Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, on May 28, 2024 appeared to win a 12-year fight to ban Spanish-style arena bullfighting.
The 166-member Colombian House of Representatives voted 93-2 to ban bullfighting by the start of 2028. The vote in the 102-member Colombian Senate was reportedly 96-2.
The last remaining formality needed to make the three-year phase-out of Spanish-style arena bullfighting official is Petro’s signature on the legislation, a foregone conclusion.
Then mayor of Bogota, the Colombian capital city, Petro in 2012 banned bullfighting at the city-owned Plaza de Santa Maria stadium, which had hosted bullfights since 1931.
“No torture is regulated; it is prohibited!”
Petro had offered to allow the Taurine Corporation, leasing the stadium for bullfights, to switch to promoting so-called “bloodless” Portuguese-style bullfighting, but the Taurine Corporation refused.
Elected president of the nation in 2022, Petro allowed the bullfighting industry no such option this time around.
“Ours is a country that says that no torture is regulated; it is prohibited,” Bogotá member of the House of Representatives Juan Carlos Losada told media.
“We became a less violent and more civilized society today. We took a quantum leap in respect for life,” Losada exulted.
Gustavo Petro, President of the Republic of Colombia. (Facebook photo)
“Children will no longer be exposed to this spectacle”
Agreed Cali city councilor Terry Hurtado, who has worked to ban Spanish-style arena bullfighting for more than 25 years, “This ban is a huge victory for organizations that have worked to transform society and reject violence against animals.
“I feel relieved that in Colombia, bulls and horses, who also participate in bullfights, will no longer be tortured, and that children will no longer be exposed to this spectacle.”
Reported Adry Torres for the Daily Mail, “Valle del Cauca representative Christian Garcés, who opposed the bill, attempted to introduce a measure to find an alternative solution, stressing that the ban would negatively impact workers.”
The Santa Maria bull ring in Bogota.
(Flickr photo)
Earlier Bogota ban was overturned by court
But relatively few workers will be affected.
“In Colombia,” said Torres, “fewer than two dozen municipalities continue to hold these events, although the annual bullfights in the western city of Manizales still draw tens of thousands of spectators.”
The Colombian prohibition of Spanish-style arena bullfighting may yet meet judicial opposition.
The Bogota bullfighting ban imposed by Petro was judicially overturned in 2016, after Petro was succeeded as mayor by Enrique Penalosa, who is now a member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
“The constitutional court ruled that bullfighting was part of Colombia’s cultural heritage and couldn’t be blocked,” explained Joshua Goodman of Associated Press on January 22, 2017, soon after bullfighting resumed at Plaza de Toros La Santa María after a four-year hiatus.
Tear gas
On that occasion, Goodman reported, “Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police and harassed spectators. Police had to fire tear gas to control the protesters, many of whom shouted ‘murderers’ and ‘torturers’ while spitting and sometimes coming to blows with spectators nervously making their way to Bogota’s 1930s-era brick bullring.
“There were several arrests,” Goodman said, “as tensions ran high in what at times seemed a reflection of deep social divisions between wealthy, well-dressed spectators who had expected a booze-filled, fun afternoon and a crowd of mostly young, angry protesters screaming obscenities at all who passed before them.”
Mayor Enrique Penalosa told Goodman that “while he sides with animal rights activists who consider the bulls’ slow, agonizing death in front of an audience a barbaric throwback, he had no choice but to enforce the high court’s ruling.
Penalosa emphasized to Goodman that he supported legislation then before the Colombian congress to prevent state resources from being used to finance bullfights, while allowing each municipality to decide for itself whether to allow bullfighting.
Bullring collapse
An incident interpreted by many Colombians as an omen that bullfighting should end was the June 2022 collapse of an improvised temporary bullfighting stadium in El Espinal municipality, Tolima state, southwest of Bogota.
A child, two women and a man were killed, with at least 500 people injured, Tolima governor Jose Ricard Orozco told reporters.
Nine of the injured fled the stadium collapse into the area itself, and were charged by a bull. Other bulls escaped into the city.
Pope banned bullfights in 1567
Attempts to stop Spanish-style arena bullfighting as pointless cruelty have been made, detailed the late Michael A. Ogorzaly (1948-2006) in The Case Against Bullfighting (2006) since 1567, when Pope Pious V in the papal bull De salute gregis dominici forbade bullfighting as an entertainment “more proper of demons than humans.”
Pope Pious V excommunicated emperors, kings and cardinals who would not ban bullfights, and clerics who attended bullfights, and excluded bullfighters from Christian burial.
Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Gasparri affirmed in 1920 that, “The Church maintains His Holiness Pious V s condemnation of such bloody, shameful shows.”
Monsignor Mario Canciani reiterated the Vatican position in 1989.
Vatican theologian Marie Hendrickx reiterated it yet again in 2000 in the semi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Bullfighting ban lifted in Mexico City
In theory, no Catholic nation should permit bullfighting now.
Yet bullfighting on January 28, 2024 returned to Plaza México in Mexico City, the world’s largest bullring, six weeks after the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice on December 6, 2023 lifted an injunction that had suspended bullfighting since May 2022.
A May 2022 local court ruling had held, responding to a petition from the human rights organization Justicia Justa, that bullfights violate Mexico City residents’ rights to inhabit a healthy environment free from violence.
While the five-justice Mexican Supreme Court of Justice panel that overturned the May 2022 ruling did not explain themselves, they appeared to have accepted an argument from lawyers representing the National Association of Fighting Bull Breeders that the only human rights issue involved was their own right to stage bullfights.
(Beth Clifton photo & collage)
Uruguay, Nicaragua, Catalan
Uruguay, a somewhat smaller South American nation located on the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina, banned bullfighting in 1912.
No other nation in which Spanish-style arena bullfighting had ever become established passed a bullfighting ban until July 2010, when the Nicaraguan legislature prohibited bullfighting by a vote of 74-5.
Catalonia, the Catalan-speaking eastern region of Spain, banned Spanish-style arena bullfighting in 2010, effective on January 1, 2012.
The last bullfight in Barcelona, the Catalan capital city, was held in 2011.
Banner used by Catalonian nationalists opposed to bullfighting.
(Catalunya Accio flag, Beth Clifton collage)
Spanish court overturned Catalan bullfighting ban
“The decision was part of the growing movement against bullfighting,” explained Ciaran Giles of Associated Press, “but it was also seen as another step in the Catalan government’s push to break away from Spain.”
On October 20, 2016, however, the Spanish Constitutional Court, the highest court in Spain, voted 8 to 3 to overturn the Catalonian ban on arena bullfighting.
“The Catalonian ban is unconstitutional, the court argued,” wrote Antonio Lorca for the Madrid newspaper El Pais, in an English text translated by George Mills, “because bullfighting had been declared part of Spain’s cultural heritage in national laws introduced in 2013 and 2015.”
Despite the court ruling, Spanish-style arena bullfighting has yet to resume in Catalonia. Some events in which locals torment and chase bulls may continue in rural communities.
COVID-19 did what lawmakers could not
The government of the Spanish island province of Majorca, also with a strong separatist movement, in July 2017 banned Spanish-style arena bullfighting, but exempted Portuguese-style “bloodless” bullfighting.
Bullfighting resumed in 2019, however, at the 95-year-old Coliseo Balear in Majorca, also by direction of the Spanish Constitutional Court.
COVID-19, killing nearly 122,000 Spaniards, on March 14, 2020 brought a complete three-month shutdown of bullfighting and related events throughout Spain, including cancellation of the Feast of Saint Fermin week of bullfights, preceded each day by the “Running of the Bulls” at Pamplona.
But the suspension of bullfighting was lifted on condition that bullrings could only be filled to one third of normal capacity, approximately as large a crowd as any attracted anyway, and that bullfights could only be held outdoors, as they are anyway.
According to the Statista.com information service, only 129 bullfights were held in Spain during 2020, but the total rebounded to 1,546 in 2022, the most since 2018, but still barely 40% as many as the 3,651 bullfights held in Spain in 2007.
The number of bullfights held in Spain has dropped in 12 of the most recent 15 years for which Statista has data.
Ed Boks: time for U.S. to ban rodeo, too
Observed Ed Boks, formerly animal control director in five cities including New York City and Los Angeles, in his blog Animal Politics, “Colombia’s decision to ban bullfighting is part of a broader movement against the practice in Latin America and beyond. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Uruguay have already prohibited bullfighting, while it remains legal in Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain, and Venezuela.
“U.S. legislators should follow Colombia’s lead by banning rodeos,” Boks recommended. “Both bullfighting and rodeo share a history of subjecting animals to unnecessary stress, pain, injury, and death for the sake of entertainment.
“Just as Colombia has recognized the inherent cruelty in bullfighting, it is time,” Boks concluded, “for the U.S. to acknowledge and address the similar ethical concerns present in rodeo events.”
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How “Vegan Mayo” going “Plant-Based” helps Catalina Island mule deer
MAY 31, 2024 BY MERRITT CLIFTON 1 COMMENT
Tossed salad & the future of animal advocacy
LONDON, U.K.; CATALINA, California––Two of the biggest names in salad rocked the vegan, vegetarian, animal rights, and conservation worlds on May 29, 2024 with near-simultaneous announcements from 5,552 miles away that superficially had beans to do with each other, and only a tangential relationship to the price of eggs, but have everything to do with the future of animal advocacy movements.
“Hellmann’s has rebranded its Vegan Mayo as Plant Based Mayo, in a bid to boost its appeal to flexitarians,” reported Niamh Leonard-Bedwell from London, England, for The Grocer.
“Still 100% free from animal products”
Hellmann’s Plant Based Mayo “is still 100% free from animal products and suitable for vegans, certified by the European Vegetarian Union and the Vegan Society,” Leonard-Bedwell explained.
But an unidentified Hellmann’s spokesperson told Leonard-Bedwell that the company, a Unilever subsidiary, perceived “considerable headroom for growth” in vegan mayonnaise, “particularly from consumers who want to cut back on animal-based products without becoming fully vegan.”
Continued Leonard-Bedwell, “The brand’s consumer research found ‘vegan’ can be a barrier for flexitarians, who see ‘plant based’ as more inclusive,” according to the unnamed Unilever spokesperson.
“Hellmann’s is therefore relaunching the entire Hellmann’s Vegan range to Hellmann’s Plant Based.”
What it means
Translation: despite the political correctness factor involved in supporting the wholly vegan makers of Just Mayo, much of the plant-based consumer base does not mind if they go to Hellmann’s, if that’s what they find on their supermarket shelves, and will not let the vegan police stop them.
Unilever, owner of both the Hellmann’s and Best Foods mayonnaise brands, is the world’s largest maker of conventional egg-based mayonnaise, as well as Vegan Mayo now rebranded as Plant Based Mayo.
Committed to end culling newly hatched chicks
But Unilever has also since September 2014 led and funded a global initiative to end the culling of newly hatched male chicks, practiced by the egg industry worldwide because the males will not grow up to lay eggs.
Historically, male chicks were either raised as gamecocks or raised for the pot, but since the advent of bigger, faster growing “meat” poultry several decades ago, most male chicks are merely suffocated, stomped, or macerated alive soon after hatching.
Catalina Island
Catalina Island, off southern California, is globally best known as reputed point of origin of Catalina dressing.
Catalina dressing is a sometimes but not always vegan variant of traditional French dressing, often polluted by the inclusion of anchovies, so read the fine print on the bottles.
The earliest documentation of the existence of Catalina dressing actually dates to the 1957 introduction of bottled Catalina dressing by Kraft Foods.
Catalina Island at that time was known as an upscale resort, movie filming location, and spring training site for baseball teams owned by chewing gum magnate Philip K. Wrigley.
European starling. (Beth Clifton photo)
War on “non-native” species
Fifteen years later, however, the Catalina Island Conservancy, formed in 1972, began an aggressive and well-funded effort to “restore” the 75-square-mile island to pre-European settlement conditions, whether or not the 4,000 human residents or anyone else favored the bloody effort.
The Catalina Island Conservancy by 1975 gained control of most of Catalina Island and almost immediately began reducing any and all “non-native” species to approximately the condition of anchovies in salad dressing.
Cattle, horses, bison brought for film use in 1924, black buck antelope, wild turkeys, pigeons, European starlings, house sparrows, bullfrogs, feral cats, rats, and pigs all have been targeted, shot from helicopters, poisoned, and occasionally rounded up and shipped off the island alive under intensive activist pressure.
(See “Buffalo Bill” Dyer, 83, led animal rescues from Santa Catalina Island.)
Pigs, goats, & bison
The most numerous casualties whose remains anyone counted were 12,000 pigs and 3,000 goats.
Some of the bison remain, but––all having been sterilized––not for long.
About 1,770 mule deer remain, as well. The mule deer have long been tolerated, being native to the California coast, but Catalina Island, though administratively a district of Los Angeles, is 22 miles offshore. Mule deer supposedly do not swim that far, meaning that somebody must have brought them, even if originally by raft or dugout canoe.
“Island ain’t big enough”
The Catalina Island Conservancy in February 2024 decided the island ain’t big enough for both mule deer and mule-headed bio-xenophobes.
(Bio-xenophobes are people obsessed with preserving “native species” at cost of exterminating everything else, including fully functional, evolving, and thriving ecologies that include “introduced” species.]
(See Science guns down excuses for hog-dogging & hits rationale for deer culls.)
That left deer defenders, including Los Angeles County board of supervisors member Janice Hahn, fighting an apparently hopeless uphill battle against intransigent “conservationists” despite science increasingly suggesting that the ecological argument for deer extermination stands up no better than carcasses shot from a helicopter.
Beat the odds, but no free pass
As Ph.D.-holding restoration ecologist Robert Kröger put it, as executive director of the pro-hunting organization Blood Origins, “The science does not support that to protect native plants, and meet recovery objectives, the number of deer––a species that have social and recreational values on the island––should be zero.”
Despite the odds, however, NBC Los Angeles reporter Missael Soto revealed on May 29, 2024, “The Catalina Island Conservancy scrapped its plan to eradicate the mule deer population on Catalina Island with a helicopter marksman,” following a unanimous vote of opposition by the Los Angeles board of supervisors.
This does not mean the deer have a free pass to survival.
“The Catalina Island Conservancy will rework its plan and consider using other methodologies previously dismissed to eradicate the estimated 1,770 deer on the island,” Soto said.
Farm Animal Rights Movement founder Alex Hershaft welcomed vegan food activist and investor Josh Balk into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame at the AR-2015 conference in Alexandria, Virginia.
Mayonnaise wars & battle for deer will continue
Both the battle for mayonnaise market share and on behalf of the Catalina Island deer will continue for quite some time, probably decades.
Both struggles meanwhile signify the mainstreaming of what as recently as 30 years ago was just “the animal rights movement,” a multi-fronted battle waged by a generation of activists carrying on and expanding the earlier efforts of the animal welfare movement of the preceding generation; the humane movement of the preceding century; and the anti-cruelty movement preceding that, when the primary goals were the abolition of human slavery and cruel and unusual punishments, with opposition to dogfighting, cockfighting, horse-flogging, and vivisection also occasionally mentioned.
The 1995 No Kill Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Animal rights movement” spun off “No-kill” movement
The “animal rights movement,” now all but moribund in the original multi-fronted, activism-centered form, spun off at least three influential descendants, all of them more focused on lifestyle changes and practical problem-solving than on protest.
First came the “no-kill movement,” addressing animal sheltering and animal care-and-control issues, recognized as such by name after the initial No Kill Conference in 1995.
Next came the “vegan movement”
Next came the “vegan movement,” expanding the earlier vegetarian temperance movement to eschew any consumption of animal products or byproducts, while dropping the “temperance” aspect.
The “vegan movement,” increasingly often identified as distinct from the “animal rights movement” since the first mentions of it appeared in mainstream media 1998, gained momentum after musician and composer Paul McCartney began using the term in public appearances in 2000.
Newest is the “compassionate conservation movement,” seeking reform of wildlife management away from the hunting-centered, bio-xenophobic direction of the century-plus since “wildlife conservation” began to separate as a cause from gamekeeping.
“Compassionate conservation”
“Compassionate conservation,” though advocated by many for decades, at last gained a name from Australian ecologist, ethologist, evolutionary biologist and feminist Arian D. Wallach in 2018.
While widely embraced, “compassionate conservation” has yet to became incorporated into the name of any major organization or conference.
However, the outcome of opposition to the Catalina Island deer culling by helicopter shows the growing strength of a cause which for more than 50 years failed to save even one animal who was not forcibly deported from the habitat where that animal and many generations of that animal’s ancestors were born.
(See Aussie prof’s video challenges “invasion biologists” on their own turf.)
Mainstreaming
All of these pro-animal movements, in original form, were relatively exclusionist, whether by intent or simply because people opposed to mainstream beliefs and practices are a minority by definition, who tend to cling together for support and safety––and tend to be suspicious of others, less intense in holding similar beliefs, who are perceived as diluting the purity of whatever the cause.
The “no-kill movement” helped to mainstream “animal rights” by re-centering a part of the “animal rights” struggle from the suffering of non-human primates and rodents in laboratories to the plight of comparably caged cats and dogs, usually perceived as pets, even when impounded as “feral” or for wreaking mayhem.
The “rescue movement,” emerging out of the “no-kill movement,” introduced a participant focus other than public protest.
Diluted focus, but won goal
As “rescuers,” people could “do something for animals” without becoming perceived as “activists,” and without having to become vegetarian or vegan, setting themselves apart from family and friends at the dinner table.
Certainly the “rescue movement” diluted the “no-kill movement” to some extent, and strayed so far from the “animal rights movement” that most people in “rescue” no longer see themselves as “animal rights activists” at all.
At least a plurality and perhaps a majority of the “animal rights” leaders of 30-40 years ago favored an end to manipulating dog and cat genetics to produce the purebred and linebred animals, including pit bulls, who are the focus of most “rescue” activity today.
Nonetheless, the “no-kill movement” and the “rescue movement” can together be credited with accomplishing one of the original “animal rights movement” goals: ending population control killing in animal shelters, 30 years ago still the third-leading cause of institutional animal killing in the U.S., trailing only slaughter for meat and laboratory use.
“Vegan movement” saved the “animal rights movement”
The “vegan movement” saved the “animal rights movement” from allegations of hypocrisy in opposing fur-wearing, vivisection, and sport hunting, among other targets, while many participants continued to eat meat.
The “vegan movement,” largely unawares, also saved what remained of the “vegetarian temperance” cause from self-suffocation through exclusivity.
But exclusivity also rapidly came to characterize the “vegan movement,” even before it had a name. The “vegan police” were already widely caricatured by “movement” critics as early as 1990, twenty years before the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World introduced the term “vegan police” to a much younger generation of activists.
Popeye gains strength from his plant-based diet. (From “Be Kind to Aminals.” See Direct action heroes for animals: Popeye, Olive Oyl, Betty Boop & Grampy)
“Plant-based” is antidote to exclusivity
“Plant-based” has emerged as the antidote to “vegan police” exclusivity, welcoming those whose diet choices, even if imperfect, tend toward achieving a more humane society.
Bear in mind that persuading ten people to eat even 10% less meat is the equivalent in impact of converting one person to becoming vegan, especially if those ten people continue to eat less meat, whereas the decidedly pro-vegan Humane Research Council discovered in a 2014 survey that approximately 84% of people who once give up meat later return to meat-eating.
Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.
How “compassionate conservation” will go mainstream remains to be seen. But the Catalina Island outcome for deer suggests that the process is already well underway, with political impact.
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After the storm, bald eagles ‘Nick’ and ‘Nora’ left desperately searching for their eaglets
ED LAVANDERA, CNN
June 1, 2024 at 7:17 AM
https://www.aol.com/storm-bald-eagles-nick-nora-141732008.html
The squawking cries from a pair of bald eagles pierce the treetops of an urban jungle on the edge of a popular lake in Dallas.
The beloved eagles are perched 75 feet high over their nest, damaged by a violent storm system that ripped through North Texas on Tuesday. Inside the nest were the bald eagle’s two 9-week-old eaglets, thrown from their sanctuary by hurricane-strength winds.
The mother and father have spent the days since the storm circling and searching for their offspring on the ground below. The scene has been heartbreaking to watch for Chris Giblin, an amateur photographer who has spent three years documenting the eagles.
“It hurts,” said Giblin. “It hurts to see them hurting. Nothing is promised when these storms come through.”
This bald eagle family has developed a legion of followers and admirers since they made this spot around White Rock Lake in East Dallas their home nearly three years ago. They came to be known as “Nick” and “Nora” after the husband-and-wife detective characters in the 1930s film “The Thin Man.”
Their every move has been documented in neighborhood Facebook groups and by a devoted and highly protective contingent of photographers. The eagles have so intensely captured the imagination of the neighbors below them that residents speak of these raptors in mystical terms and their presence as “divine intervention.”
The eagle’s nest sits in a sycamore tree at the end of Krista de la Harpe’s street. She describes the relationship between the birds and the neighborhood as a “three-year love story.”
As the storm hit the city, she could only think about the eagles and their babies surviving the fierce winds and falling trees.
“I was in my closet all through the storm, just praying for them,” de la Harpe said as she watched the eagles sitting in the trees this week. “It’s so heartbreaking.”
‘I found one’
After the storm passed, neighbors raced out to check on the nest and the eagles. Water was rushing over the banks of the creek below the nest. The fierce winds toppled a mix of large oak, cedar and American elm trees, and the eaglets were nowhere to be seen.
Brett Johnson, an urban biologist and conservation manager for the City of Dallas, raced to the park after the storm. He saw half the nest was gone and that the two eaglets were missing.
Later that morning, Bryna Thomson searched the creek area with neighbors when she heard her friend shouting, “I found one. I found one. I found one.”
The video she captured shows an eaglet shivering and soaked in rain but seemingly not severely injured, even eating a fish it had caught in the floodwaters.
“They were healthy babies,” Thomson said.
The neighbor called in to report what they had found. Johnson says he collaborated with state game wardens and US Fish and Wildlife Services to get permission to handle the federally protected bird and move it to a rehabilitation facility that specializes in treating bald eagles. The facility did not respond to CNN’s request for an interview.
The eaglet did not suffer any serious injuries, but the rehab specialists say it could take a week for the bird to regain its strength, Johnson said Friday.
“It was definitely stunned,” Johnson said. “I am very hopeful, fairly confident, it’s going to be rehabbed.”
The city’s conservation team and biologists are working to develop a reintroduction plan to bring the young bird back to its nesting area and possibly reunite with its parents, Johnson says. If the eaglet successfully recovers, it’s still not clear how the bird will be returned to its parents and its home environment.
The second eaglet has not been seen since the Tuesday morning storm. Neighbors fear the worst. It might have been swept away in the floodwaters that have surged through the creek for days. Downed trees have also made it impossible for searchers to safely access the spots where the eaglet might have fallen. The area is also home to bald eagle predators like coyotes and bobcats.
Scott Meril, a retired medical doctor, came to the nesting area to capture photographs of the mourning eagle parents. The images show one of the eagles squawking into the sky with its head tilted back in a pose that seemed to capture the bird’s desperation.
Meril said he was struck by the eagle’s majestic and powerful stare as they scanned the urban landscape looking for the eaglets.
“To see them in Texas, it’s wild,” Meril said.
‘You can’t fight this stupid Texas weather’
This isn’t the first time tragedy has struck Nick and Nora’s quest to bring a successful clutch of eggs into the world.
In February 2022, the mating bald eagles built a nest in the same area near White Rock Lake. Residents came from across the city to catch a glimpse of the new stars of the neighborhood, waiting for the babies to hatch. But a severe storm with fierce winds ripped the nest and the tree branches apart. The eggs fell to the ground.
“They have been through a lot,” said Johnson.
In 2023, Nick and Nora built a second nest around White Rock Lake but abandoned it and never laid eggs.
Johnson says the nest was built in an area that was probably too close to the crowds of people who use the lake for recreation.
This year, residents thought the eagles had finally succeeded. The eaglets were just a week or two away from being able to fly on their own. At that point, Nick and Nora would teach them how to hunt for their own food.
The day before the storm Giblin captured stunning images of the small birds “branching” out of their nests – the first attempts to jump from their nests onto nearby tree branches.
The cycle of natural life seemed so close to becoming complete, but again nature intervened in a tragic way.
“They just can’t catch a break,” Thomson said. “They were good parents, and it’s just that you can’t fight this stupid Texas weather.”
Yellowstone comes to Dallas
While bald eagles can often be found near large cities, it remains rare for eagles to nest and mate in busy urban areas. This is why Giblin and a group of photographers have spent countless hours documenting the couple.
Giblin, who works for a merchandising company, estimates he has snapped more than 20,000 pictures of the eagles since they started appearing regularly here three years ago. He’s so dedicated, he once spent 7 hours waiting to capture a single shot of the eagles flying from their nest. He equates the bald eagles’ presence in Dallas to having Yellowstone National Park in the city
“In this metropolis, they chose to nest right here. It’s absolutely crazy,” Giblin said.
“That’s why I’m down here every weekend. I don’t take it for granted.”
Thomson, a middle school science teacher, says the bald eagles have brought her neighborhood closer together. She often sets up a spotting scope connected to an iPad, which she calls “Eagle TV,” so children can watch the eagles up-close.
“They’re the coolest birds ever,” Thomson said. “I’m not really a bird person, but apparently I am. Because I sure do like the bald eagle.”
These Dallas eagle lovers worry years of disappointment might convince Nick and Nora to abandon their lives around their neighborhood lake and look to build a nest elsewhere. The majestic birds don’t realize they’re the main characters in a love story their neighbors don’t want to end.
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Exposing the Big Game 
