- Cat-a –List, I am depressed with what you tell me! Why don’t we just kill them?
- Kill whom Rat-a-Lin?
- The humans of course! They are breeding discriminately, they are worse than rabbits, or even us rats. What do they do when they have plagues invading their territory? They kill us, without any mercy. They through poisons from land and air, They shot us, they hunt us to extinction. All this for what, to simply satisfy their sexual urges, with catastrophic consequences for the rest of nature.
Can they ever understand that Earth is not theirs? Earth is a planet that gave rise to a diversity of life not seen anywhere else, and what do these creatures do? They destroy it all... the work of 4 billion years, gone in less than 300 years. They are nothing else than another life form that share the planet with us
-Well, Rat-a-Lin, they have this complicated thing called religion which they built up to reassure them that they are special and have the right to do whatever they like with the life of others, even with themselves. They impose their ideas upon each other and even kill for that.
- Well, at least we only kill for territory and when our territories are overpopulated, our females eat the cubs.
- Well, humans also kill for territory, but they are special creatures who have this tendency to deceive themselves so they claim that they kill for God, which will later pay them back with wealth and territory. As to eating their own cubs, I have not heard anything like that, but they do kill, if not eat, the offspring of other humans, specially after they invading their territories . And they also rape the women.
- Ahhh, just like the lions!
-Yes rat-a-Lin, some observation of lion behaviour has shown that when new males enter a pride, they kill the cubs that have been fathered by the older male and take over the females. This technique ensures that the females get quickly in heat so they can produce new babies with the new male’s genetic pool. This is also why humans rape females of the conquered territories.
- So they are just like us Cat!
-Yes Rat-a-Lin. Nothing in humans is different from other animals, they are, but they like to think they are different because that gives them the right to strip the Earth from what she has produced.
- On what basis do they think they are different? They are no more different from us, than a whale is different from a blackbird.
- Precisely, Rat-a-Lin, but the majority of them believe in this thing they call god, and by believing so, they assume that what they call god gave them carte-blanche to do whatever they please towards other living creatures. I ask myself how can this defect of nature called humans have managed to destroy a whole planet in 2 million years? The dinosaurs rule the Earth for more than 200 million of years and they did not do so much damage.
- Maybe the big Dinosaur god got fed up with them, taking up so much space and sent a big fire ball into the sky to finish them off..
and here Rat-a-Lin fell on his back holding his tummy with his tiny pink hands and laughed with those convulsive hit pitch sounds just like a rat can do.
-But relax Rat-a-Lin, because the way things go and according to my studies, the humans won’t rule the Earth for more than 500 years. They are doomed. When they perish, they’ll take a load of life with them, but Earth is resilient and from those who survived, new forms of life will evolve. They won’t need any of their gods to through a meteorite at them. They are their own stone of fire!
The daily thoughts of an alien morphed into a cat (Cat-a-List) running a study on human behaviour on planet Earth. This blog expresses the daily discussions between him and his good friend Rat-a-Lin, a genetically modified rat who escaped from some random University in East Anglia. Both creatures express their views about human morality and ask themselves why humans consider certain types of pure logical reasoning to be politically incorrect.
Friday, 5 November 2010
What are we going to do about Brazilian wildlife?
Hi Rat-a-Lin, I just found this document on the human female's desk and I think you need to listen to this:
-----------------------------------------
On September 11 WSPA Brazil World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) organised a meeting on the topic “ Wild animals are not pets”. I was invited to the opening ceremony as a keynote speaker to address the many problems derived from illegal wildlife traffic. Usually, my trips to Brazil are both exciting and depressing. Exciting because of the pleasure of meeting old friends involved in conservation and animal welfare, depressing because I am reminded of the inadequacy of Brazilian and international policies intended to put an end to environmental and wildlife exploitation.
On October 3, Brazilians will be voting to elect the president as well as senators and local representatives. Listening to their campaigns reminds me that the rhetoric used by politicians is always the same around the world. Buzz words like “economic development”, “health and education for all”, and “environment”, are part of the vocabulary of every vote chaser in the world. But while buzzwords may capture the voters’ imagination, they do not solve problems. In Brazil, many of the politicians running for public office are people rich in wealth but poor in knowledge and wisdom and one can only describe them as deeply ignorant of environmental issues. Brazil is in danger of losing a number of threatened species as the supposed price for the “development of the country”. But in Brazil this so-called development is something that winds up lining the pockets of a few wealthy members of the country’s oligarchy.
Brazil is politically divided. While the south, populated by descendants of Europeans, is well developed and reminds one of any developed country, the north inherited a colonialist culture where the poor live in extreme poverty in quasi-feudal relationship with the wealthy. For the latter, President Lula´s policies were welcomed. Those below a certain income threshold receive a “cesta básica”, or basic basket, which provides an amount of money to cover their basic food needs educational needs. They also receive a state contribution for each child in school under 16. According to the discontented southerners, this policy is an incentive for the lazy northerners to have big families, supported by the high taxation imposed on those who work. Thus it is no wonder that the north supports the PT (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), headed by President Lula, in power for eight years. In the view of the middle class, President Lula, an ex-union leader from the metal industry, manipulates the poor by giving them peanuts, while favouring his cronies, big capital, bankers, oil industry and farming monopolies based on sugar cane, soya and cattle. This lobby has an exceedingly destructive impact in Brazilian ecosystems.
Legislation on environmental protection is complex and controversial. Following the path of the big ecological movements of the seventies, the government approved a state-of-the-art set of environmental laws with a strong emphasis on conservation and biodiversity. With the development of large-scale agricultural production, the demand for land increased. In an attempt to prevent full-scale destruction of the natural habitat, the law requires each estate to preserve a minimum percentage of the original vegetation. This percentage varies between 80% for very large properties to 20% for small ones. In the producers’ perspective, any land is cultivable land and in order to minimise the amount of unusable terrain, they divide their large properties into small lots, creating small islands of green surrounded by cultivated land or pasture. This isolates the remaining wildlife populations, and the lack of ecological corridors between these islands leads to a rapid decrease in genetic variability and a fast route to extinction.
After harvesting, uncontrolled fires are used to clear the land for sowing. With the onset of climate change, Brazil has been experiencing longer periods of drought which has lead to the spread of these fires into the surrounding forest. Every year, thousands of wild animals die in these fires and those that are rescued are sent to the many wildlife shelters spread across the country. These shelters are run by small NGOs which do not receive any support from the state. The role played by these shelters in conservation is vital, but few animals are re-introduced into the wild due to the lack of release sites and the bureaucratic impediments imposed by IBAMA, the state organ that regulates environmental issues. The shelters are now full to capacity and cannot cope with any more animals. Facing this, IBAMA has approved the use of euthanasia, even on threatened species.
Many of the people managing these shelters live in relative poverty as all their time and resources are dedicated to the animals in their care. While IBAMA simply takes advantage of the goodwill of these wildlife champions, it overloads the shelters without providing any support. Furthermore, the NGOs are obliged to pay taxes on charitable contributions received. As a result, the majority of people running these shelters are in a state of desperation. When visiting them and learning about their experiences, it is difficult to remain untouched by their difficulties. On top of this, every month thousands of animals rescued from illegal trafficking are brought to these shelters. Shelter managers are well intentioned people, fully dedicated to the causes of biodiversity and animal welfare. In my meetings with many of them I witnessed their tears of desperation and bursts of rage as they feel impotent to fight the corruption in the country. They believe that only international pressure can change the state of things.
Brazil has dreams of becoming the world’s number one in biodiesel production, but at what cost? Destruction of the last beacon of biodiversity for the satisfaction of cheap consumerism? Development without responsibility is a route to self-destruction. Environmental awareness is alien to greedy eyes of Brazilian entrepreneurs. President Lula himself is proud to proclaim that the economic wealth of his country - meaning of his cronies - is more important that any insignificant spotted forest cat. Meanwhile, the wildlife shelters are full of threatened species.
Pumas, involved in traffic accidents because of uncontrollable urban expansion into their territory, Mane wolves and sloths rescued from burnt areas, birds caught in illegal wildlife traffic, monkeys invading populated areas in search for food, jaguars shot on ranches to protect cattle herds or illegally hunted for profit by wealthy American and European trophy hunters are just some of the hazards afflicting Brazilian wildlife.
Brazil’s biodiversity is not restricted to the Amazon. It includes the Pantanal, one of the largest wetlands and biodiversity hotspots in the world, which is threatened by heavy cattle ranching; the Atlantic Forest, now reduced to less that 7% of its original size; the Cerrado and so many other biomes, invaded by exploitation to satisfy the insatiable demands of consumerism.
Deforestation is not due to poverty, but to the greed of wealthy farmers, loggers and corrupt politicians. Forest fires can be easily detected by satellite, a technology available in Brazil which has its very own satellites. However, those in power continue to claim that it is difficult to spot illegal fires in the immensity of the tropical forest. Any Internet user can launch Google Earth to zoom in to the state of Roraima in the north of the Amazonian forest and identify the extent of deforestation and erosion. At this pace, in 50 years we can say goodbye to the Amazon and all the wildlife it supports.
Deforestation is not the only problem that afflicts neo-tropical fauna. Illegal traffic in wild animals is a growing epidemic that is associated with criminal gangs involved in drugs and weapon smuggling. The appeal of keeping wild animals as status symbols is widespread among wealthy citizens around the world, with Europe, USA and the Arab Emirates the worst perpetrators. There are well-known routes and traffickers that could be easily stopped if there was international political will. The Brazilian Federal police on their own cannot act on the criminal networks outside their jurisdiction. There is some co-operation with Interpol, but according to Federal Police insiders, wildlife crime does not top their priorities.
Stopping illegal traffic is not helped by CITES, the international convention that regulates commerce in wildlife, nor by European legislation. The fact that CITES exists, is in itself an open door to trade in wildlife, which should not be allowed in any circumstances. In the UK in 2007, changes to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 took many species including racoons, emus, sloths and squirrel monkeys off the list of animals for which licences are needed. Not only is this a problem for the welfare of the animals in question, it is also a stimulus to demand. This is now reflected in Brazil, where the Government is attempting to pass legislation to allow the expansion of commercial wildlife breeders. This proposal is based on the assumption that regulating commercial breeders would stop wildlife poaching. Unfortunately data from the Federal Police shows that the majority of these commercial breeders are involved in fraud, taking in poached wild animals and falsifying documentation to legalise them as bred in captivity. A calculation by the Federal Police has estimated that while taking an animal from the wild may cost something like $15, the very same animal may end up in the international market with a price tag of several thousand dollars. A macaw for example could end up being sold for between $5,000 and $20,000. The rarer the animal, the larger the profit for traffickers. A large percentage of the cost is added by these legal breeders during the pseudo-legalisation of the animal.
Many Brazilians are plagued by the question of what are international leaders going to do about this? Fancy words about environmental policies are not enough. We need to enforce sanctions against environmental destruction. There is no lack of environmental education in Brazil, whose citizens are well aware of the devastation taking place in their country. But there is a lack of moral responsibility, especially among the powerful.
Brazilian wildlife is not a problem exclusive to Brazilians. It concerns all of us. The amount of meat we eat, the feedstuffs provided to our livestock, the oil and its derivatives -- everything Brazil exports -- is taking its toll on its biodiversity. Brazilian wildlife does not need buzzwords that embellish political speeches. It needs action and pressure from across the globe. It is our responsibility to help these shelters to continue their work, saving injured and poached wildlife. These animals are the patrimony of the world. They are our responsibility. They are the victims of policies that place a steak on the plate of every citizen in the world. Do you still think you do not owe them anything?
-----------------
-----------------------------------------
On September 11 WSPA Brazil World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) organised a meeting on the topic “ Wild animals are not pets”. I was invited to the opening ceremony as a keynote speaker to address the many problems derived from illegal wildlife traffic. Usually, my trips to Brazil are both exciting and depressing. Exciting because of the pleasure of meeting old friends involved in conservation and animal welfare, depressing because I am reminded of the inadequacy of Brazilian and international policies intended to put an end to environmental and wildlife exploitation.
On October 3, Brazilians will be voting to elect the president as well as senators and local representatives. Listening to their campaigns reminds me that the rhetoric used by politicians is always the same around the world. Buzz words like “economic development”, “health and education for all”, and “environment”, are part of the vocabulary of every vote chaser in the world. But while buzzwords may capture the voters’ imagination, they do not solve problems. In Brazil, many of the politicians running for public office are people rich in wealth but poor in knowledge and wisdom and one can only describe them as deeply ignorant of environmental issues. Brazil is in danger of losing a number of threatened species as the supposed price for the “development of the country”. But in Brazil this so-called development is something that winds up lining the pockets of a few wealthy members of the country’s oligarchy.
Brazil is politically divided. While the south, populated by descendants of Europeans, is well developed and reminds one of any developed country, the north inherited a colonialist culture where the poor live in extreme poverty in quasi-feudal relationship with the wealthy. For the latter, President Lula´s policies were welcomed. Those below a certain income threshold receive a “cesta básica”, or basic basket, which provides an amount of money to cover their basic food needs educational needs. They also receive a state contribution for each child in school under 16. According to the discontented southerners, this policy is an incentive for the lazy northerners to have big families, supported by the high taxation imposed on those who work. Thus it is no wonder that the north supports the PT (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro), headed by President Lula, in power for eight years. In the view of the middle class, President Lula, an ex-union leader from the metal industry, manipulates the poor by giving them peanuts, while favouring his cronies, big capital, bankers, oil industry and farming monopolies based on sugar cane, soya and cattle. This lobby has an exceedingly destructive impact in Brazilian ecosystems.
Legislation on environmental protection is complex and controversial. Following the path of the big ecological movements of the seventies, the government approved a state-of-the-art set of environmental laws with a strong emphasis on conservation and biodiversity. With the development of large-scale agricultural production, the demand for land increased. In an attempt to prevent full-scale destruction of the natural habitat, the law requires each estate to preserve a minimum percentage of the original vegetation. This percentage varies between 80% for very large properties to 20% for small ones. In the producers’ perspective, any land is cultivable land and in order to minimise the amount of unusable terrain, they divide their large properties into small lots, creating small islands of green surrounded by cultivated land or pasture. This isolates the remaining wildlife populations, and the lack of ecological corridors between these islands leads to a rapid decrease in genetic variability and a fast route to extinction.
After harvesting, uncontrolled fires are used to clear the land for sowing. With the onset of climate change, Brazil has been experiencing longer periods of drought which has lead to the spread of these fires into the surrounding forest. Every year, thousands of wild animals die in these fires and those that are rescued are sent to the many wildlife shelters spread across the country. These shelters are run by small NGOs which do not receive any support from the state. The role played by these shelters in conservation is vital, but few animals are re-introduced into the wild due to the lack of release sites and the bureaucratic impediments imposed by IBAMA, the state organ that regulates environmental issues. The shelters are now full to capacity and cannot cope with any more animals. Facing this, IBAMA has approved the use of euthanasia, even on threatened species.
Many of the people managing these shelters live in relative poverty as all their time and resources are dedicated to the animals in their care. While IBAMA simply takes advantage of the goodwill of these wildlife champions, it overloads the shelters without providing any support. Furthermore, the NGOs are obliged to pay taxes on charitable contributions received. As a result, the majority of people running these shelters are in a state of desperation. When visiting them and learning about their experiences, it is difficult to remain untouched by their difficulties. On top of this, every month thousands of animals rescued from illegal trafficking are brought to these shelters. Shelter managers are well intentioned people, fully dedicated to the causes of biodiversity and animal welfare. In my meetings with many of them I witnessed their tears of desperation and bursts of rage as they feel impotent to fight the corruption in the country. They believe that only international pressure can change the state of things.
Brazil has dreams of becoming the world’s number one in biodiesel production, but at what cost? Destruction of the last beacon of biodiversity for the satisfaction of cheap consumerism? Development without responsibility is a route to self-destruction. Environmental awareness is alien to greedy eyes of Brazilian entrepreneurs. President Lula himself is proud to proclaim that the economic wealth of his country - meaning of his cronies - is more important that any insignificant spotted forest cat. Meanwhile, the wildlife shelters are full of threatened species.
Pumas, involved in traffic accidents because of uncontrollable urban expansion into their territory, Mane wolves and sloths rescued from burnt areas, birds caught in illegal wildlife traffic, monkeys invading populated areas in search for food, jaguars shot on ranches to protect cattle herds or illegally hunted for profit by wealthy American and European trophy hunters are just some of the hazards afflicting Brazilian wildlife.
Brazil’s biodiversity is not restricted to the Amazon. It includes the Pantanal, one of the largest wetlands and biodiversity hotspots in the world, which is threatened by heavy cattle ranching; the Atlantic Forest, now reduced to less that 7% of its original size; the Cerrado and so many other biomes, invaded by exploitation to satisfy the insatiable demands of consumerism.
Deforestation is not due to poverty, but to the greed of wealthy farmers, loggers and corrupt politicians. Forest fires can be easily detected by satellite, a technology available in Brazil which has its very own satellites. However, those in power continue to claim that it is difficult to spot illegal fires in the immensity of the tropical forest. Any Internet user can launch Google Earth to zoom in to the state of Roraima in the north of the Amazonian forest and identify the extent of deforestation and erosion. At this pace, in 50 years we can say goodbye to the Amazon and all the wildlife it supports.
Deforestation is not the only problem that afflicts neo-tropical fauna. Illegal traffic in wild animals is a growing epidemic that is associated with criminal gangs involved in drugs and weapon smuggling. The appeal of keeping wild animals as status symbols is widespread among wealthy citizens around the world, with Europe, USA and the Arab Emirates the worst perpetrators. There are well-known routes and traffickers that could be easily stopped if there was international political will. The Brazilian Federal police on their own cannot act on the criminal networks outside their jurisdiction. There is some co-operation with Interpol, but according to Federal Police insiders, wildlife crime does not top their priorities.
Stopping illegal traffic is not helped by CITES, the international convention that regulates commerce in wildlife, nor by European legislation. The fact that CITES exists, is in itself an open door to trade in wildlife, which should not be allowed in any circumstances. In the UK in 2007, changes to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 took many species including racoons, emus, sloths and squirrel monkeys off the list of animals for which licences are needed. Not only is this a problem for the welfare of the animals in question, it is also a stimulus to demand. This is now reflected in Brazil, where the Government is attempting to pass legislation to allow the expansion of commercial wildlife breeders. This proposal is based on the assumption that regulating commercial breeders would stop wildlife poaching. Unfortunately data from the Federal Police shows that the majority of these commercial breeders are involved in fraud, taking in poached wild animals and falsifying documentation to legalise them as bred in captivity. A calculation by the Federal Police has estimated that while taking an animal from the wild may cost something like $15, the very same animal may end up in the international market with a price tag of several thousand dollars. A macaw for example could end up being sold for between $5,000 and $20,000. The rarer the animal, the larger the profit for traffickers. A large percentage of the cost is added by these legal breeders during the pseudo-legalisation of the animal.
Many Brazilians are plagued by the question of what are international leaders going to do about this? Fancy words about environmental policies are not enough. We need to enforce sanctions against environmental destruction. There is no lack of environmental education in Brazil, whose citizens are well aware of the devastation taking place in their country. But there is a lack of moral responsibility, especially among the powerful.
Brazilian wildlife is not a problem exclusive to Brazilians. It concerns all of us. The amount of meat we eat, the feedstuffs provided to our livestock, the oil and its derivatives -- everything Brazil exports -- is taking its toll on its biodiversity. Brazilian wildlife does not need buzzwords that embellish political speeches. It needs action and pressure from across the globe. It is our responsibility to help these shelters to continue their work, saving injured and poached wildlife. These animals are the patrimony of the world. They are our responsibility. They are the victims of policies that place a steak on the plate of every citizen in the world. Do you still think you do not owe them anything?
-----------------
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)