Part of our lot as human beings on planet earth is dominion over the plant and animal kingdoms, and as a by-product of our economic and cultural heritage, we have largely become indifferent to the suffering of animals. An indicator of the cruelest aspects of our nature.
This systemic disrespect for nature and her creatures is part of, or symptomatic of, a larger problem with modern society, the institutionalized perception that we are separate and independent of our environment. This dualism is part of the division of consciousness that is often noted in ancient texts as well as contemporary discussions of the characteristics of human consciousness.
Perhaps the most appalling sign of human kind’s dualistic trap is how we treat our friends in the animal kingdom. Yet this destructive idea is a tragic falsehood, as animals and plants alike are conscious, sentient and intelligent. The examples of this are everywhere today, and in this video, we see humpback whales clearly showing their appreciation to the humans who freed them from fishing nets.
We are now also discovering the deeper lives of plants, and in a research study spanning some 30 plus years, biologists have discovered the songs of plants.
Forest ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Colombia has uncovered the subterranean network of organisms that allow trees to communicate with one another.
Their learning process is now being compared to that of human children, and in the following video, an experiment demonstrates the similarities between the two.
Many of the world’s most majestic animals are under direct threat of extinction today, and while most humans fail to appreciate this for what it really means, others continue to learn from animals, admiring their tenacity in the face of overwhelming pressure from humans. In the following case a pack of Andean bears works together to dismantle remote wildlife cameras.
Animals display a broad range of emotion as well, as is sometimes revealed in front of cameras, for example here, when a leopard exhibits compassion for the child of monkey it has just killed.
You don’t have to look to hard to find signs of mankind’s disrespect, disregard, and distrust of nature. Raising awareness of our connection and dependence on the natural world in these materialistic times is the only way to counter the devastation. Fukushima, the Deepwater Horizon, mountain-top removal, deforestation, tar sands, fracking, plastic pollution, depleted uranium, animal cruelty, so on and on… there really is no end to our ignorance and disrespect.
Whatever your relationship to the natural world is, and no matter what kind of dystopian illusions you may have for our future, there is no escaping the truth that we are all products of nature, and as such dependent on the natural world for survival and happiness.
(*) Sofia Adamson is a contributing writer for Waking Times with a keen appreciation for matters of science and the spirit.
Read more articles from Sofia Adamson
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Oklahoma could soon join Louisiana and Texas in allowing hunters to shoot feral hogs from helicopters.
| March 28, 2017, at 1:06 p.m.
Oklahoma May Legalize Hog Hunting From Helicopters
FILE – In this Feb. 18, 2009, file photo, the shadow of a helicopter hovers over feral pigs near Mertzon, Texas. Oklahoma lawmakers are considering a bill to allow hunters to shoot feral hogs from helicopters. Aerial gunners are already used to help control feral swine in Oklahoma, but the work can only be done by trained, licensed contractors with support from the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma could soon join Louisiana and Texas in allowing hunters to shoot feral hogs from helicopters.
The Tulsa World (http://bit.ly/2neDl3i ) reports that aerial gunners are already used to help control feral swine in Oklahoma. But that work can only be done by trained, licensed contractors with support from the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry.
Lawmakers are considering a bill to expand the law to private operations.
Under the proposal, private landowners, companies and pilots would have to apply for a state license and be responsible for the activity. But hunters on board the aircraft wouldn’t need a license, nor would they have to provide their names to the state.
The agriculture department says its agents killed more than 11,200 feral hogs, mostly by air, last year.
Amid rising reports of animal abuses at meat processing facilities, France’s parliament has voted that slaughterhouses be required to install surveillance cameras to monitor workers’ interactions with live animals.
The proposed legislation, which was approved by 28 members on Jan. 12, would give the country’s nearly 1,000 slaughterhouses until Jan. 1, 2018 to install CCTV cameras everywhere live animals are handled, including monitoring the transport process and while they’re being held in stables, reports Politico.
According to the bill, the footage from each slaughterhouse would only be viewable to veterinarians, approved government officials or animal-welfare inspectors and would be kept on government file for a month. The bill also proposes the creations of a national Committee on the Ethics of Slaughterhouses, which would oversee and mete out harsher penalties to facilities caught violating the law.
The move comes amid heightened scrutiny of the country’s meat industry. In 2016, animal rights activist group L214 released troubling footage showing numerous animal abuses at several French meat-processing facilities inclduing workers killing animals without stunning them first, throwing lambs into walls, and hitting live animals.
Though the bill passed in parliament—where just four MPs opposed the legislation—it must still be approved by France’s senate. According to Reuters, the vote could happen as early as February.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate chose to turn nightmare into reality for animals living in our nation’s wildlife refuges — federal land in Alaska specifically set aside for them to thrive, not to become targets of inhumane and unsporting killing methods.
By a 52 to 47 party-line vote, Senators voted to repeal a 2016 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule forbidding the most outrageous acts:
Black bears being caught in painful snare traps while foraging for food …
Wolf pups being shot point-blank in their dens …
Grizzly bears being chased by plane or helicopter before being shot down by trophy hunters …
All this cruelty and suffering for trophies.
With this heartbreaking vote, Congress enabled 76 million acres of our national wildlife refuges to become killing fields for trappers, baiters and spring trophy hunters.
The politicians in Washington who voted to allow these cruel practices do not represent the views of regular Americans on animal welfare or wildlife conservation. They sided with the special interests who want to kill wolf pups and hibernating grizzly bears for pleasure.
And this is only one of the recent attacks on animals:
Congress is trying to cherry-pick wolves from the federal list of endangered species, exposing them to trophy hunting, commercial trapping and hounding.
The Department of the Interior will allow millions of birds and other animals to suffer from lead poisoning by reversing an order restricting the use of toxic lead ammunition on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands.
Tennessee walking horses are still at risk of having chemicals burned into their skin until the anti-soring rule is unfrozen under the new administration.
And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has purged its website of government inspection reports on thousands of puppy mills, roadside zoos and other facilities.
Brooks Fahy has been working for decades to save wild animals from painful traps — and while he has seen hundreds of sad cases, there’s one coyote he’ll never forget.
Fahy, who is the executive director of the nonprofit Predator Defense, received a call from a concerned citizen about an animal caught in a trap. After scouring the Oregon woods, he found the young coyote — his leg was badly pinched in a leghold trap.
Brooks Fahy/Predator Defense
“When I walked up on that coyote, he looked at me and then he looked down, like he was ready to accept his fate,” Fahy told The Dodo.
Animals caught in traps can wait days before they’re found and killed — sometimes for their meat or fur, other times just for recreation. Some animals caught in traps try to gnaw off their own limbs out of desperation. “Traps are notoriously nonselective, whether it’s an M44, a neck snare, a leghold trap, any animal that comes along could get caught,” Fahy said. Endangered species and even people’s beloved dogs can be injured or even killed because of indiscriminate traps.
The trap was set out by Wildlife Services, a branch of the USDA that kills tens of thousands of coyotes each year by trapping, shooting, snaring and poisoning them.
Warning: Graphic image below
The coyote Fahy found seemed to be determined to stay alive. There were some puddles of melted snow near him, which he appeared to have been drinking from, Fahy said: “He had been in the trap a long time, a week minimum.”
Fahy also noticed a branch sticking up out of the ground beside him that was all chewed up.
“He’d been gnawing on it to relieve the pain,” Fahy said.
As Fahy got closer, he noticed paw prints in the ground and the vestiges of smaller animals. “There were these small bones around him — we realized that a mate was bringing him food,” Fahy remembers. “It’s gut-wrenching. It haunts me to this day.”
Fahy did everything he could to save the 2-year-old coyote’s life. Except for his terrible injury, he appeared healthy. “He was in his prime,” Fahy said.
But the coyote’s foot was completely ruined — the bones were jutting out through his skin. And the animal appeared to be exhausted from trying to survive. “When I picked him up and wrapped him in a blanket, I felt him completely relax in my arms,” Fahy said. “He had nothing left.”
Brooks Fahy/Predator Defense
Fahy carried the young coyote a mile to his truck and then drove him to see a veterinarian. Sadly, the coyote was just in too much pain, so Brooks held him while the veterinarian euthanized him with an injection.
“I’ve dealt with hundreds of trapping cases. I’ve seen animals who have lost their teeth because they’re gnawing so hard on the trap, I’ve seen it all,” Brooks said. “But I think of this coyote every day.”
Fahy holds the coyote as he’s being euthanized.Brooks Fahy/Predator Defense
This coyote died in 1992. “Virtually nothing has changed,” Fahy said. “If anything, it’s gotten worse.”
Hundreds of thousands of coyotes like him have been killed since then, many of them by these painful traps. In 2016 alone, Wildlife Services killed 76,963 adult coyotes; over 19,000 of them were killed by leghold traps, foothold traps, leg snares and neck snares. And that doesn’t even count how many coyotes and other animals were killed through trapping by private citizens.
“The brutality of these traps cannot be overstated,” Adam M. Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA, said in a statement. “Steel-jaw leghold traps and Conibear traps slam shut with bone-crushing force, causing massive injury and trauma. Animals trapped in strangulation neck snares — designed to tighten around an animal’s neck as he or she struggles — also suffer in extreme agony for an unconscionable amount of time.”
“Steel-jaw leghold traps, snares, and Conibear traps can cause massive pain, injury and even death to anyone who crosses its path,” Jennifer Place, a program associate at Born Free USA who specializes in trapping issues, told The Dodo. “We have seen it happen too many times: a mountain lion cub caught in a leghold trap; a dog who breaks her teeth to the gum line in her panic to free herself from a trap; a boy rushed to the ER with a Conibear trap on his arm; a young man getting ensnared in a Conibear trap set near a park playground. These traps are cruel, archaic and terrifyingly indiscriminate, and they can be found anywhere.”
There are bills in the U.S. House of Representatives that could finally put some limits on trapping, Place added, like the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act (H.R. 1438), which seeks to ban leghold traps and body traps in national wildlife refuges. “It is time to stop the further spread and use of these brutal devices,” she said.
Another bill introduced to the House this month is the Public Safety and Wildlife Protection Act (H.R. 1629), which aims to ban the import, export and interstate commerce of steel-jaw leghold traps and Conibear traps, the two most widely used traps in the U.S. And it’s expected that the Limiting Inhumane Federal Trapping (LIFT) for Public Safety Act, which seeks to ban traps on federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior and Wildlife Services, will be reintroduced.
People who have been fighting trapping for years are hopeful that some of the suffering could soon come to an end — but the public needs to know about what’s going on and to speak up for these animals.
“I’ve been doing this work for 40 years and I never cease to be amazed that this is still going on,” Fahy said. “We know through science that these species are self-regulating. It’s time we evolve as a society and stop thinking of animals as natural resources. It’s important for us to empathize with these animals, to feel the loneliness of an animal caught in a trap. They feel pain. They suffer. They want to live.”
Posted: Mar 22, 2017 8:14 PM PDTUpdated: Mar 22, 2017 8:14 PM PDT
By Kolby Crossley
M44 cyanide, just how dangerous is it?
BOZEMAN –It’s a tool often used by Montana ranchers to kill livestock predators, but now, an Oregon congressman wants to ban the use of cyanide traps nationwide.
The M44 cyanide trap has been used by the United States government to control pests since the 1930’s. Montana is one of the few states in the country where ranchers, after being certified, can plant their own devices.
But many are questioning the safety and efficacy of the device. The incident in Idaho is not the first time an M44 has injured or killed the wrong target.
According to the USDA, Wildlife Services is authorized to use M44 cyanide capsules to control coyotes, Wild dogs, and red, gray and arctic foxes which are: suspected of preying upon livestock, poultry, or federally designated threatened and endangered species.
However, Brooks Fahy Executive Director of Predator Defense says thousands of animals die from this cyanide poison every year and just in the past week three dogs have died.
Fahy says, “The vast majority of the animals that they are killing like 99.9 percent of the animals they kill have never prayed on livestock.”
The USDA released a statement about the incident that happened a week ago with the boy and dog in Idaho saying, “We take this possible exposure to sodium cyanide seriously and are conducting a thorough review of this incident. Wildlife services have removed m-44s in that immediate area, and will work to review our operating procedures to determine whether improvements can be made to reduce the likelihood of similar occurrences happening in the future.”
Fahy says there are other options trappers can use other than “cyanide bombs.”
“Practice co-existence in other words proper husbandry practices when your sheep are lambing, guard dogs, fencing, and flattery.”
Jarrod Moss, a vet at Creekside Veterinary Hospital here in Bozeman says if your animal comes in contact with cyanide get them to vet as soon as possible and also make sure you protect yourself in the process.
Brooks says, “Humans are at severe risk of absorbing some of that cyanide through their skin so we need to be very careful when handling your animal, I would recommend wrapping your dog or cat in a towel or shirt, limiting your exposure.”
Fahy recalls an incident involving a man in Utah when he came in contact with the poison.
“Who had an M44 go off in his face and hit him in his chest and he got some of it in his face. He’s been disabled ever since, never able to go back to work.”
USDA says that all applicators are required to carry an antidote kit when applying or inspecting M44s and no human fatalities have been associated with wild services use of M44s.
The bill being put forth by Congressman Defazio is set to for a vote next week. We’ll continue to follow that bill as it progresses.
NESPELEM—After three hunting seasons without harvesting a wolf, a Colville Tribal member has taken the first.
Duane Hall, 37 of Omak, brought a gray wolf into the Colville Tribal Fish & Wildlife office for sealing on Friday, CTFW confirmed Monday.
Just three of the estimated 18 to 20 wolves—spread out among at least three packs—are allowed to be taken, per CTFW’s predator hunting regulations.
“I didn’t really have a reaction,” CTFW director Randall Friedlander said.
Hunting group Rez Bucks, Bulls & Predators, operated by tribal member Sean Gorr, published the news on Nov. 17 at 12:45 p.m.
A share to Tribal Tribune’s Facebook was met with mixed reviews.
“Terrible,” tribal member Lorin Hutton said.
“Nice kill,” tribal member Ted Piccolo added.
“Wildlife management is a must,” Gorr stated in the conversation. “Predator control is a must. Regulated hunting seasons is a must. All that needs to happen to sustain enough big game to feed our families for generations.”
Wolf hunting season started Aug. 1 and ends Feb. 28. Three known packs exist on the Colville Reservation: The Strawberry, the Whitestone and the Nc’icn. A collared wolf was accidentally slain on the Colville Reservation during a recapturing effort by CTFW in January 2015.
Friedlander said the amount of wolves harvested—by way of rifle or trap hunting—are determined by the number of wolves.
“We try to manage for the total population,” he said, “and that’s why we allow three per year. That’s based on a percentage of the overall population (of wolves).”
He reiterated the right to hunt is an ancestral right.
“We try to create opportunities for tribal members to practice their traditional, cultural way of life,” Friedlander said. “That includes the harvesting of some predators for some tribal members. Not all tribal members harvest predators, but some do.”
In May, CTFW reduced the number of wolves that could be taken from 12 to three each season, but allowed traps to be used for the first time.
Last month, a Washington wolf from the Huckleberry Pack, which was thought to range from the Spokane Reservation north, was killed after a 700-mile trek from Washington to Idaho, Canada and then central Montana.
The Tribune has reached out to Hall for an interview.
The fate of not only people, but billions of animals will soon rest in the hands of President-Elect Donald Trump. NOW is the time that we MUST stand up for our values and urge him to fight animal abuse. No matter whom you voted for, you still have a say in the future of animal rights in America.
Sadly, the Trump family has notoriously slaughtered elephants, leopards and other cherished, exotic animals for pure sport in now-viral trophy hunts. And Trump’s promised deregulation of industry could result in even worse torture of animals on factory farms. For compassionate citizens, our work is clearly cut out for us.
But we, the people, are not helpless in shaping the future. Mr. Trump won on a platform of vowing to help those who feel they have no voice in the current political system. Animals are the truly voiceless. And Trump’s promised “law and order” can and must extend to cracking down on crimes against animals, too.
Please join us in urging Mr. Trump to show compassion for the animals viciously abused every day. The dogs and cats beaten, neglected and murdered by human hands. The pigs, chickens and cows who suffer in disease and prison-like confinement for Big Agriculture. The elephants, lions, tigers and other wild species violently forced to entertain humans in traveling circuses and roadside zoos — and yes, those needlessly killed in canned trophy hunts.
Mr. Trump, the citizens have spoken: Please make animal rights a priority for the United States!
Exposing the Big Game 
