âThe return of the northern gray wolf is a welcome sign of nature's ability â and man's â to change and adapt. People once prided themselves on shoving nature aside to make way for civilization; now, more of us pride ourselves on having the brains to undo our mistakes. The gray wolf's remarkable success has cheered wildlife biologists: Not only have its numbers increased, but it has expanded its territory by finding its niche in a much-changed environment. That means, barring further stupid actions by mankind, it should be able to thrive on its own and play a helpful environmental role as a natural predator.â
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Do Americans who are upset about Cecil even realize how terrifying animals can be?
This is important.Â
âThe American tendency to romanticize animals that have been given actual names and to jump onto a hashtag train has turned an ordinary situation â there were 800 lions legally killed over a decade by well-heeled foreigners who shelled out serious money to prove their prowess â into what seems to my Zimbabwean eyes an absurdist circus.
PETA is calling for the hunter to be hanged. Zimbabwean politicians are accusing the United States of staging Cecilâs killing as a âployâ to make our country look bad. And Americans who canât find Zimbabwe on a map are applauding the nationâs demand for the extradition of the dentist, unaware that a baby elephant was reportedly slaughtered for our presidentâs most recent birthday banquet.
We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.
Donât tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Donât bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into concrete jungles.
And please, donât offer me condolences about Cecil unless youâre also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger.â
Dr. Ingrid Visser and her colleagues have come up with a plan to house captive orcas that is nothing short of genius. It is ecologically sound, and would accommodate whales that are not cand...
These three experiences that SeaWorld orcas miss out on illustrate the simple fact that a captive orca isnât really an orca at all, it is a commoditized being that bears only physical similarities to their wild counterparts.
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While there has been some positive progress for captive elephants in recent years, there is still a long way to go. When we examine how life in captivity compares to life in the wild, we can truly see how devastating captivity is for these magnificent animals.
Fred Jacobs: There is no truth to your claim on stress. We have displayed killer whales for nearly 50 years. In that time our trainers have interacted with them hundreds of times a day, every day. Literally millions of safe interactions with these animals.
Dr. Naomi Rose: [T]his claim, which SeaWorld has been making ever since Dawn Brancheau was killed (the company relied heavily on it in the first OSHA hearing), is misleading at best and simply incorrect at worst. The correct metric to determine the safety of interacting with this species is not the number of interactions but the number of whales involved in injuries and deaths.
SeaWorld has held approximately 60-70 whales in its history. Of these, at least 10 (and frankly itâs been more, but these are the ones I know for certain) have been involved in interactions that resulted in peopleâs injuries or deaths. THATâs the relevant metric. An analogy would be if there was a car model that had a design flaw that will eventually result in brake failure in some percentage of cars. One might drive any such car hundreds or even thousands of miles before the failure, but eventually the brakes will fail in some percentage of cars because of this flaw. So the relevant metric would be not how many miles one drives before the failure, but the number of cars that eventually fail. If only 1-2% of cars of this model experienced brake failure, they would be recalled.
In SeaWorldâs case, at least a sixth of its whales have âfailedâ â thatâs a double digit failure rate, which in any other industry would result in a recall.
An old but important article by Dr. Naomi Rose examining the hypocrisy of SeaWorld:
SeaWorld: Killer whales live all over the world in distinct populations -- some very different from each other -- and we do not have enough adequate science to know if different ecotypes have different lifespans.
Dr. Naomi Rose: This should not matter, based on SeaWorldâs own arguments. SeaWorld says captivity is a healthy environment, so its killer whales should be living lives at the longer end of the speciesâ potential (different ecotypes are not yet considered different species and even if they were, there is no reason to assume their inherent maximum longevities would be different -- any differences in life span would likely be caused by extrinsic environmental factors). Captive killer whales should overall be living 50 to 90 years for females and 30 to 70 years for males, barring stochastic events. In addition, SeaWorld mixes ecotypes and different geographic regions within its collection and in its breeding program. This is not only inappropriate from a conservation standpoint but makes this bullet point somewhat irrelevant.
"Regarding SeaWorld's response, it is making an apples-to-oranges comparison," Naomi Rose, Ph.D., a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, told The Dodo. "It is true that in-air noises like fireworks do not penetrate the air-water interface well. While the whales might be able to hear the fireworks underwater, the noise would be very muted and would probably not be very bothersome. What SeaWorld fails to address (on purpose, no doubt) is that captive orcas spend an unnatural amount of time at the surface of the water â in fact, with their head (and ears) out of the water. As a matter of standard operating procedure, the whales are taught "stationing" behavior â to position themselves in front of their trainers, head out of the water â which is how they are fed."
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âYouâve been featured on my blog, CONGRATS!â
A while back a piece I had published on One Green Planet received enough criticism worthy to be written about by a young woman named Melissa.
Responding to people like Melissa is generally frowned upon. I know it wonât get me anywhere. As far as she is concerned, Iâm an ditzy extremist hoping to take away the rights of all people.
Hit the nail on the head.
So why bother?
Melissa likes to take things out of context. A lot.
A lot.
A lot.
1) âDuhâ
In pointing out that obtaining a wild animal is selfish: Melissa made it a point to let her readers know that owning a dog or a cat is also selfish. AND that they donât contribute to conservation...
....
because giving a home to a dog or cat in need (thanks to an overpopulation problem we singlehandedly created) is the same as fueling an already booming illegal trade.Â
Melissa, again, took what I wrote out of context, and questioned whether or not I was willing to acknowledge that repopulation is possible because of breeding and release programs implemented by accredited (qualified) facilities.
âŚ.
I thought I was writing about average citizens (the general public) obtaining wild animals. Not AZA accredited institutions and their SSPâs.
2) My Lazy Non-Rebuttal
Melissa seems to be lacking basic comprehension skills here, so weâll leave it at that.
Also, my opinion is ignorant.
3) NitwitÂ
Melissa suggested to her readers that I, obviously, must believe âall domesticated cats and dogs have lost their instinct to hunt, run, and mate.â
She continues on to let her readers know, âClearly the agenda driven author doesnât have brain functioning to comprehend this subject, so I wonât get further into it.â
âŚIf that means I need to listen to another Google certified expert discuss the silver fox experiment and apply it to the (hypothetical) domestication of all wild animals, then no, I donât.Â
Iâm so sorry I slept through all of my classes. This will be my only response to you. I need to take a nap so that I may refrain from reading any books that may further my knowledge (or lack thereof) that have lead to my incredibly ignorant opinions.
Next time, keep your disparaging remarks to yourself.
âSeaWorld likes to say that they own only five orcas captured in the wild. More accurately, they have owned 32 killer whales captured in the wild throughout the companyâs history, only five of whom have survivedâ John Hargrove, Beneath the Surface
âAfter the deaths of Alexis and Dawn in 2009 and 2010, SeaWorld took the $5 an hour increase away. Since waterwork was now proscribed by OSHA, the company explained, trainers werenât swimming with the whales anymore and shouldnât be paid the extra (at first known as âhazard pay,â then, for legal reasons, changed to a âpremiumâ). They seemed to overlook the fact that Dawn was not performing waterwork when she was grabbed, pulled in and dismembered.â John Hargrove
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Since the release of the documentary Blackfish, weâve seen the true impact of the âBlackfish effectâ â Here are 12 of the worst things to happen to SeaWorld since the documentaryâs release.