First Light Productions

investigative journalism

Posts from the “SANCTUARY” Category

Goddamnit! It Never Ends: Greenpeace Has Photos of Illegal Rainforest Destruction by Bumitama Ltd.

Posted on December 1, 2013

Thanks narhvalur.

gettingonmysoapbox's avatargettingonmysoapbox

Will this madness ever stop?

Mongabay reports that Greenpeace has photos of illegal clearing.

Flyovers of a concession owned by PT Andalan Sukses Makmur, a subsidiary of  Bumitama Agri Ltd, show excavators clearing peat forests and digging drainage  canals just outside Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan. Tanjung  Puting is famous for its population of orangutans that have been intensely  studied by Birute Galdikas, a noted researcher and conservationist.

Greenpeace says mapping and field investigations show that forest conversion  took place February and October 2013, “including clearance of intact peatland  forests inside buffer zones identified on the high conservation value (HCV)  assessment for the concession.” The deforestation proceeded despite a pledge  from Bumitama not to clear an where a survey identified a group stranded  orangutans.

Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1122-greenpeace-palm-oil-photos.html#1VGVRrh5Dw2mrxLG.99

And sign this petition from RAN:

The Snack Food 20 are the makers of some of the best-known snack food brands in the world, and they’re using “conflict…

View original post 112 more words

Sorry, But Wolf Slaughter Is Not American by James William Gibson

Posted on October 28, 2013

Nabeki's avatarHowling For Justice

FacebookphotoOfWolfhuntres

October 28, 2013

“Fed Up in Wyoming” reads the caption under this stunning photograph posted on a hunter’s Facebook page (reproduced here under Fair Use). The photo is yet more evidence that, two years after political reactionaries led a successful campaign in the House of Representatives and then the Senate to remove the North Rocky Mountain gray wolf from the endangered species list, the slaughter of wolves continues to escalate as wolf hunters fall deeper in their paranoid fantasy that the wolf represents a liberal conspiracy against rural communities.

The Facebook page  that originally posted the image belongs to two Wyoming hunting outfitters, Colby and Codi Gines. The Gines run CG Wilderness Adventures, headquartered in a highly remote part of Wyoming’s Bridger Teton National Forest, bordering on the southeast section of Yellowstone National Park.  “Wyoming is God’s country, and we invite you to come see it for…

View original post 912 more words

Red Wolves (and Coyotes) Under the Gun!

Posted on October 27, 2013

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

There are only about 100 left – and if drastic measures aren’t taken soon, the critically endangered red wolf could once again be pushed to extinction in the wild by coyote hunters in North Carolina.

Last week, Defenders of Wildlife and other conservation groups officially filed suit in federal court to halt uncontrolled hunting of coyotes in the red wolves’ North Carolina habitat. In the past year, hunters have killed at least 10 red wolves – that’s 10 percent of the remaining wild population of these remarkable creatures.

North Carolina’s red wolves are the last remaining wild population on earth. These animals were extinct in the wild as recently as 1980 due to intensive predator control and loss of habitat. A concerted reintroduction program has raised the wild population of these animals to roughly 100, all confined to a small area in the eastern part of the state.

Red wolves are almost…

View original post 76 more words

Amur Falcon success!

Posted on October 25, 2013

The Amur falcon migration from Siberia has arrived again in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland.

Amur falcon. (Photo: Conservation India)

      Last year tens of thousands of the birds were trapped in nets and killed in their gathering place on the Doyang reservoir.

Last year – trapped.

This year, the Councils of three villages came together and passed a resolution making the hunting and killing of falcons a punishable offense.

Meetings were held with villagers in the district to advise them of the need to protect the birds and a number of awareness campaigns were conducted including an Animal Action Education programme for school children.

Last year. (Photo: Conservation India)

Last year. (Photo: Conservation India)

Patrols by local villagers have policed the birds’ roosting sites and brought the entrapment and killing to an abrupt stop.

Wildlife Trust of India’s Regional Head Sunil Kyarong talks to villagers about wildlife and the importance of protecting nature. (Photo: Yuri Pator)

Natural Nagas and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) assisted the state Forest Department in mounting the campaigns.

Amazingly, many of the people helping to protect the birds are former hunters.

According to reports not a single bird this year has been killed.

Source: Wildlife Trust of India.

Saving chimps at Gombe

Posted on October 21, 2013

At the turn of the century there were nearly 2 million chimpanzees
in the wild.

    Today
Jane Goodall, Gombe 1960. (Photo: JGI)

Jane Goodall, Gombe 1960. (Photo: JGI)

A new video

    from the Jane Goodall Institute demonstrates how technology can enable people to save habitat to save animals and help themselves in the bargain.

Elephant Down

Posted on October 20, 2013

I reblogged this but it got mashed by the tech gremlins, so click here to read this fascinating account of the travails of wildlife conservation in Africa.

(Photo: Rory Young)

(Photo: Rory Young)

Source: Anomie’s Child.

Jaws of Hell

Posted on October 18, 2013

Made in six sizes, small ones for mink, the largest for bear, the Oneida-Newhouse leghold trap worked in all conditions; under water or on dry land, no matter the weather.

Oneida traps were widely used both in New England and in the American West. (Image: Project Gutenberg)

First produced in the 1850s in a factory in the wilderness of Western New York, the Oneida steel-jawed trap became a central tool in the nation’s war on predators.

Number one on the list was the wolf. So feared was the animal, the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony put a bounty on them in 1630. By the middle of the 19th century they’d been exterminated throughout the eastern seaboard.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Year Book 1920.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Year Book 1920.

    The leghold trap became an essential tool for pioneers heading west who took the fear of the beast with them.

    “Evidence that Uncle Sam’s Hunters Get results.” U.S. Department of Agriculture Year Book for 1920.

    Professional ‘wolfers’ hired by stockmen and a fearful settler population — abetted as today by the government — shot, poisoned and trapped wolves in an eradication effort that reached its apex in the early years of the last century, by which time some 55,000 wolves a year were being executed in the Western U.S..

    Over sixty countries have outlawed irrational “predator” control. But not the United States.

PCB Contamination Changes Bird Songs

Posted on October 13, 2013

Thirty-six years after General Electric was forced by court order to stop dumping PCBs into the Hudson River, the destructiveness of these manmade chemicals—of which chemists working for Monsanto (the manufacturer) and GE (Monsanto’s largest customer) were well aware—continue coming to light. The chemical industry has worked long and hard to cover up studies showing how these chemicals have affected human health.

Stop The Euphemisms Hunters – You’re Killing Wolves Not Harvesting Turnips!

Posted on October 13, 2013

Nabeki's avatarHowling For Justice

Walla Walla Pack Pup ODFW

Wolves Are Killed Not Harvested

October 11, 2013

“Sport” hunting is a brutal business. It means taking the life of an innocent animal for personal gain. The hunting industry doesn’t like the word  kill because it exposes the lie that animals die peacefully after being arrowed, shot, trapped, choked and generally tortured to death. So they sanitize the cruelty of hunting by using euphemisms to describe their evil deeds. Harvest is a favorite.

Harvest: The gathering of a ripened crop

Are wolves ripened crops to be harvested as  turnips, green onions, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, pumpkins, squash, bell peppers, grapes, etc? Or are wolves and other living creatures sentient beings who feel pain, who suffer, who bleed, who die?

Admit what you’re doing  killers of beauty.  You’re not harvesting anything. You’re making a conscious decision to take an innocent animal’s life. Stop sanitizing your actions. We have your number, you…

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Tell the President of Wayne State University to Halt Cruel Heart Failure Experiments on Dogs

Posted on October 11, 2013

Stacey's avatarOur Compass

Please click HERE to sign and send letter

Source PCRM

Rogue, a brown, black, and white hound, endured months of experimental surgeries, having nine devices implanted in her body and being forced to run on a treadmill. At just 15 months old she died in October 2012 in a laboratory at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she was being used in cruel and misguided experiments. Unfortunately, Rogue was neither the first nor the last dog to suffer and die like this, but with your help we can stop these experiments once and for all.

Please speak out and demand that the president of Wayne State end these experiments immediately.

These experiments have been going on at Wayne State for more than 20 years. Over that time, hundreds of dogs have been used and killed with no human health benefits to show for it. Since 2000, more than $8 million…

View original post 348 more words

Letting Go Of Ruby: A Lesson In The Dying Light

Posted on October 9, 2013

Amen.

Going To The Dogs's avatarGoing To The Dogs

Image

 

My elderly mother adopted an Italian Greyhound named Ruby eight years ago. 

Ruby brought out a maternal devotion in my mother that made my sister and me more than a bit resentful.  Ruby has more clothes than we did as kids, and, more to the point, had to jump through none of the hoops we did to earn her love.  Ah, but then dogs are less complicated than people, making the give and take of love fluid and easy.  Ruby makes my mom happy; she’s a good companion and a social bridge to people.  She gives mom a reason to get up in the morning, take walks and keep going.

When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s last year, she was in the early middle stages.  Confused at times, unable to manage her finances, hold anything in her short term memory.  But Ruby’s routine — her feeding schedule, her…

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Pelangsi

Posted on September 27, 2013

A short film follows the rescue of an orangutan caught in a snare, his rehabilitation and release back into the wild.

Pelangsi. (Photo: International Animal Rescue)

Efforts expended by groups such as International Animal Rescue to save these creatures are extraordinary. Footage of the ape moving through the trees near the end says it all.

Boycotting products containing palm oil is one thing we can all do to help the animals in Indonesia.

Shout out: Wildlife Extra

We’re All Individuals

Posted on September 15, 2013

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

[This goes for observing animals in the wild as well.]

August letter by Robert Grillo, Free from harm.org

Visiting a sanctuary is a vastly different experience than visiting a farm. Farms value animals to the extent that they produce a profitable product via their flesh, mammary gland secretions or ovulation. Visiting animals on farms does not produce any “breakthrough” in our understanding of animals. On the contrary, most people simply walk away from a farm reaffirming what they have been taught: animals don’t object to being used as resources. It’s natural and sanctified by ancient traditions. Somehow, we rationalize, animals have passively accepted their lot in life. On farms, we view meek or fearful animals from a distance or on the other side of an electrical fence, typically in herds or flocks with ear tags (numbers instead of names), and under conditions which generally repress their ability to express themselves as…

View original post 343 more words

Enviro Groups Challenge Anti-Wildlife Policies

Posted on September 15, 2013

Exposing the Big Game's avatarExposing the Big Game

…Two of the top environmental groups have sent out action alerts challenging anti-wildlife policies today. First, from the NRDC…

A little-known government agency called Wildlife Services is killing thousands of wild animals every year — and you and I are picking up the tab.

We need your help to end the taxpayer-funded slaughter of wildlife!

This out-of-control agency is part of the Department of Agriculture. It kills at the behest of big ranchers and agribusiness. It spends tens of millions of our tax dollars to “resolve conflicts” with wildlife — by using poisons, traps, aerial gunning and other brutal methods.

The result? More than 100,000 native carnivores — such as wolves, bobcats, foxes and black bears — are being wiped out every year.

The tragic toll since 2000 is two million dead, and that number grows larger every day.

More than 50,000 of those animals were killed accidentally. The victims…

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