An emaciated Tiger in a Vietnamese farm cage awaits slaughter for TCM Tiger PartsA mascot of an evil, barbaric and low-life society
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Vietnam is the most backward country for the illegal wildlife trade according to the latest wildlife report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Despite the growing middle class of Vietnam, the cultural practice of wildlife witchcraft quackery persists. It is this new wealth that is enabling more Vietnamese to drive the slaughter of wlidlife such as Rhinos, Elephants and Tigers for their body parts. The worse ‘demand countries’ for wildlife parts according to the WWF are Vietnam, China and Thailand.
The demand in wildlife parts is mainly driven from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is an ancient backward cult in witchcraft quackery. The TCM witchdoctors prey on superstitious simpletons who think drinking tiger bone wine will cure chronic ailments. The TCM Barbaric Cult is a global chronic ailment in superstitious barbarism that is driving sadistic persecution of precious endangered wildlife. TCM is no different to the Khmer Rouge, except the TCM Barbaric Cult targets wildlife instead of people.
They evangelise TCM cures anything from fatigue, stroke, cancer, back pain, migraine and low libido, which is all misleading lies. It has its own quack terms such as ‘Yin Deficiency’, ‘Yang Deficiency’, ‘Qi Stagnation’. TCM dimwits certainly have ‘deficiency’ alright in the intelligence department. Whatever the hocus-pocus names, TCM is backward, barbaric, sadistic, cruel, illegal, and doesn’t bloody well work anyway. Only sad simpletons would spend a cent on quackery. Those who traffick in wildlife parts deserve the same fate as the wildlife.
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TCM relies on the illegal black market in wildlife parts trafficking. It is overdue for the backward practices of TCM to be outlawed globally.
A TCM practitioner plying her trade in Yin/Yang Bollocks
The following articles highlight the problem of the increasing illegal trade in wildlife parts for Traditional Chinese Medicine. When one visits the cities of these countries and see the every inctreasing shining skyline, one can be mistaken for believing one is entering a modern civilisation.
One the eve of the opening of the latest CITES session the wildlife group WWF has released a report that shows Vietnam is the worse country for the illegal wildlife trade. In the traffic light system used by the WWF to rank countries Vietnam scored a red in trade in rhino and tigers with a yellow card for elephants.
“It is time for Vietnam to face the fact that its illegal consumption of rhino horn is driving the widespread poaching of endangered Rhinos in Africa, and that it must crack down on the illegal rhino horn trade. Viet Nam should review its penalties and immediately curtail retail markets, including Internet advertising for horn,” said Elisabeth McLellan, Global Species Programme manager at WWF.
A number of Vietnamese people have been arrested over recent years in South Africa for being involved in rhino smuggling. Even some Vietnamese diplomats have been caught involved in the trade.
China is given a yellow card for its involvement in the elephant ivory trade. The country has been highlighted as having inadequate management of its legal ivory market and this offers a conduit for illegally poached ivory to find a legitimate market.
Tusks of Elephants savagedly butchered for TCM, their tusks chainsawed off while still alive. This is a TCM stockpile of tusks intercepted in a shipping container in Malaysia
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Skulls of Cambodians savagedly butchered by the Khmer Rouge This is a stockpile of human skulls in the Tuolsleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh
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The WWF reports calls on the Chinese government to dramatically improve its enforcement of the ivory market. It also calls on the government to remind its workers involved in major projects in Africa that anyone caught importing illegal wildlife products into China would be prosecuted, and if convicted, severely penalized.
While China got a yellow card for the ivory trade Thailand scored a red due to a legal loop-hole that makes it easy for illegally poached ivory to enter the luxury goods market.
“In Thailand, illegal African ivory is being openly sold in up-scale boutiques that cater to unsuspecting tourists. Governments will be taking up this troubling issue this week. So far Thailand has not responded adequately to concerns and, with the amount of ivory of uncertain origin in circulation, the only credible option at this stage is a ban on ivory trade,” McLellan said.
There is good news in the report as well. The WWF commends the countries from central Africa who recently signed a multinational agreement to tackle poaching.
“Although most Central African countries receive yellow or red scores for elephants, there are some encouraging signals. Last month Gabon burned its entire ivory stockpile, to ensure that no tusks would leak into illegal trade, and President Ali Bongo committed to both increasing protections in the country’s parks and to ensuring that those committing wildlife crimes are prosecuted and sent to prison.” said WWF Global Species Programme manager Wendy Elliott.
The brightest spot of the report though goes to Nepal which last year, 2011, saw no losses to its rhino population due to improvements to anti-poaching and other law enforcement efforts.
[Source: ‘Vietnam gets failing grade in WWF’s illegal wildlife trade report card’, by Wynne Parry, LiveScienceSun, 20120722, ^http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/vietnam-gets-failing-grade-in-wwfs-illegal-wildlife-trade-report-card]
.Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)
Members of the species once inhabited rainforests, swamps and cloud forests in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China.
In historical times they lived in southwest China, particularly in Sichuan.
But with TCM barbarism they have become persecuted and are now critically endangered,
with only six substantial populations in the wild: four on Sumatra, one on Borneo, and one in the Malay Peninsula.
(Photo: Bill Konstant/International Rhino Foundation)
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Rhinoceroses are poached for their horns that are then sold on the global black market to collectors and for medicinal purposes.
A conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund, has put together a report card ranking 23 nations’ compliance with an international treaty regulating the trade in wild animals. The report card focuses on three species sought after on the international black market: elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses, and evaluates how well certain countries have held up their commitments as part of the treaty.
“These are just three species, and they are probably the three most talked about, so they are a kind of bellwether for wider problems,” said Colman O Criodain, wildlife trade specialist with the WWF.
The report looks at countries where these animals originate and must travel through, as well as the countries where they arrive for sale. There were some bright spots: India and Nepal received green marks for all three species, showing they had made progress toward complying with the treaty and enforcing policies to prevent the illegal trade.
Many countries, however, received red marks indicating they are failing to uphold their commitments under the treaty.
There have already been consequences for animals. In the last decade, the western black rhino went extinct and the Indochinese Javan rhinoceros was eradicated from Vietnam. Poaching played a crucial role, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Other subspecies of these large, plant-eating creatures are driven by demand for their horns. In Vietnam, demand for rhino horn has boomed thanks to rumors it has healing and aphrodisiac properties, O Criodain said.
For Asians seeking aphrodisiacs?Viagra is proven to work, but TCM is bollocks
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The report calls out Vietnam, which WWF says is the top destination for South African rhino horn, saying Vietnam’s penalties for participating in the illegal trade are weak and legal measures are insufficient to curtail illegal trade on the Internet. “Despite numerous seizures elsewhere implicating (Viet Nam), there has been no recorded seizure of rhino horn in the country since 2008,” reads a statement issued by WWF.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty signed by 175 nations, makes nearly all commercial trade in rhino horns, elephant ivory, tiger parts and other species threatened with extinction illegal. In addition, signatories committed to regulating trade within their borders.
WWF ranked nations’ compliance with the treaty — evaluating whether or not the nation had adopted policies that supported the treaty — and the nations’ enforcement of those policies.
A nation could have good laws on the books but fail to enforce them. For instance, China has laws tightly controlling the sale of elephant ivory. However, it does not have a strong record of enforcing them, O Criodain said.
The report card is not comprehensive; rather it is a snapshot that focuses on certain countries that face the highest levels of illegal trade in these three species. Countries from which a particular species has been eradicated, such as Central Africa which has lost all of its rhinos, escaped an evaluation, O’Criodain noted.
The evaluation is based on government announcements reported in media, CITES documentation and information collected by Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network that is a joint program of the WWF and IUCN.
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Bile being extracted from a bear’s gall bladder – while it is conscious
(ENV photo)
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In Vietnam, Ha Long Bear Bile Farms continue to flout the law by selling bile to Korean tourists @ $30 per cc.
Vietnam’s bears are being pushed to the edge of extinction according to ENV, primarily due to the illegal hunting and trade to support the demand for bear bile used as a traditional form of medicine (TCM). Hundreds of Asian tourists including many Koreans, visit per week, watch the extraction process, drink bear gall wine and pay $30 per CC for take-away bile. The plight of these bears is truly pitiful.
Most of the approximately 3,500 bears in Vietnamese farms are thought to have been caught as cubs in the wild and then raised for the painful extraction of bile from their gall bladders.
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ENV produced this powerful public service announcement to persuade people not to drink bear bile wine.
‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique are the countries that do the least to crack down on an illegal trade in animal parts that is threatening the survival of elephants, rhinos and tigers, the WWF conservation group said on Monday.
In its ‘Wildlife Crime Scorecard’ report, it said 23 countries surveyed mostly in Africa and Asia, the main sources and destinations of animal parts, could all do more to enforce laws banning a trade that WWF said was increasingly run by international crime syndicates.’
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‘Vietnam proposes legalizing use of tiger parts in traditional medicines’
‘Vietnam has proposed a move that activists allege would boost tiger poaching across the world. The country has proposed legalising the use of parts of captive bred tigers that die of natural causes in traditional medicines. If approved, this is likely to spur demand for body parts of the big cat in the international market and hit tiger conservation efforts currently underway. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam sent the proposal to the prime minister of the country in March this year.
The disclosure has taken the international community, which is currently discussing a coordinated strategy for recovering global tiger population in New Delhi, by shock. The proposal was brought to the notice of the tiger range countries by non-profits when they were discussing the measures to eliminate the demand for tiger parts during the 1st Stocktaking Meeting of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP) between May 15 and May 17. The conference was organised by National Tiger Conservation Authority of India along with the Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative and the World Bank to take stock of the GTRP, which was adopted in 2010 and aims at doubling the global wild tiger population by 2022. Currently, around 3,200 wild tigers thrive in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Vietnam, however, did not mention the MARD proposal in its draft GTRP implementation report, a document each of the tiger range countries submitted to explain the actions taken by their governments for tiger conservation. The proposal is part of an investigation report prepared by the MARD on the wild and captive-bred tigers in Vietnam. Around 112 tigers are kept in breeding farms in Vietnam. “According to Vietnam’s law and International Convention, any activity of trading or using tigers and tiger products is prohibited. Tiger breeding facilities therefore can gain no profit. Moreover, because of the regulations against tiger trading, these facilities don’t have specific breeding purposes,” says the report. It further states that “dead tigers (from captive facilities) can be used to make specimens and traditional medicine on a pilot basis.”
But conservationists are not pleased. “This is in contradiction of the spirit of UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and GTRP. We want to give a clear message to Vietnam that if it goes ahead with the plan, we might have to take action against it in whatever capacity we can,” says Keshav Varma, programme director of the Global Tiger Initiative of the World Bank. The tiger range countries, including Vietnam, are signatories to CITES that prohibits the trade in tiger parts and derivatives, including domestic trade.
When asked, the representative of Vietnam’s ministry of natural resource and environment said the proposal came from a different ministry and he could not say much about it. He, however, hoped that the proposal would not be approved by their prime minister. “We are appalled that a few countries promise something else on international platforms while their domestic policies imply something else. If they allow trade of dead tigers kept in captivity, many tigers will be killed in the wild and their parts will be sold under the wrap of this scheme,” says Debbie Banks of UK-based non-profit, Environmental Investigation Agency.
So when you visit your Ying Yang Traditional Chinese Medicine Quack, remember this tiger suffered for your healing cult.
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Is China above board?
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In the meeting apprehensions were also expressed regarding China’s domestic policies on captive tiger breeding and trade. For long tiger bones have been used in traditional medicines and wines in China. This had made the country principal destination for tiger parts from all over the world. In 1993, China prohibited the use, manufacture, sale, import and export of tiger bone products and products labelled as containing tiger bones.
However, in 2007, the State Forestry Administration (SFA), of China issued guidelines for the registration, labelling and sale of tiger and leopard skins of “legal origin.” “This seems to contradict China’s claim that trade in tiger parts is banned in the country. We have consistently requested clarification from China over just how many skins have been registered, how many have been sold under this policy, how many have come from captive bred sources, how many are reportedly from the wild and how legality has been verified. They have never responded,” says Banks.
China has also failed to meet the CITES resolution that it would take “measures to restrict the captive population to a level supportive only to conserving wild tigers.” The captive tigers in China have reportedly increased from 6,000 in 2010 to 9,000 now. There are allegations that the captive farms stockpiles the tiger bones and other parts of dead tigers. There is no transparency from China on where these stockpiles end up. “The issue of whether stockpiling of tiger bones in the captive farms in China is for research or for commercial use needs further clarification and is a serious cause of concern. We urge that China should follow the CITES resolution of keeping the captive bred tiger population restricted to support wild population in letter and spirit,” says Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority.
Roaring demand for tiger bone tonic wine during the Year of the Tiger has delighted those taking part in the underground industry but sent chills through conservationists.
Despite a national prohibition on dealing in tiger body parts, online trade and tiger farms are flourishing, leading opponents to call for additional protection of the endangered species.
“In Western countries, people believe in Western medicine but there has seldom been as much enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as there is now, especially those made from animals,” said Ge Rui, Asian Regional Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
She said tiger farms are now a major threat to the species. While the farms are tolerated, the State Forest Ministry issued a notice at the end of last year stating that tiger bodies from the farms should be sealed for safekeeping.
“The government has made a great deal of effort to curb the illegal trade in rare and endangered species in recent years,” Ge said. “But their work is mainly focused on cross-border trade. The government allows the operation of tiger farms.”
According to statistics from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, there are now about 3,200 wild tigers worldwide.
In China, only about 20 tigers are thought to be left in the wild.
“The existence of tiger farms and increasing illegal trade in tiger products is seriously threatening this precious species,” she said. “In the Year of the Tiger, we should be doing more.”
Chinese animal rights groups recently launched an online campaign pushing for more protection of wild animals.
Despite the concern, consumers are still eager to get their hands on the illegal tonic wine.
“Tiger bone tonic wine will surely be popular this year,” said a seller from the Beijing Xinghuo Company.
“Nothing could be better than sending it to your relatives or leaders during the Year of the Tiger, both for good wishes and to keep them healthy.”
The company sells a wide range of wines, including a tiger bone tonic wine.
A 500 ml bottle of tiger bone wine, made in Heilongjiang province, sells for 1,380 yuan.
Tiger Wine – extracted from Tigers
It may as well be the cerebral fluid of Cambodians butchered at the hand of the Khmer Rouge
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Human Cerebrospinal fluid
Not as marketable in test tubes, but then TCM Cultists haven’t got around to bottling and branding this yet
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However, a bottle of tiger bone wine, said to be from Tongrentang, the place that supplied medicine to the royal pharmacy during the Qing Dynasty for 188 years, is even more expensive. Such wine, made in 1990s, sells for around 25,000 yuan.
The wine, which is believed to have medicinal properties, should improve with age, so the older the bottle, the higher the price. Those produced in the 1980s can sell for 60,000 yuan for 323 ml.
“Real tiger bone tonic wine is very popular in the market now,” said Sjkexiao, a 20-year old man who was looking to sell two bottles online that he claimed was tiger bone wine made in Tongrentang in 1984.
He said tiger bone tonic wine had been increasing in price in recent years.
Tigers have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Tiger bone tonic wine is used in the treatment of arthritis and rheumatism.
China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981. It imposed a ban on the harvesting of tiger bones and outlawed all trade in tiger body parts in 1993.
As a result, tiger bone remedies were removed from TCM dictionaries.
“Medicines with parts from rare animals are not allowed to be sold now,” said a staff member, surnamed Zhang, at a Cachet pharmacy.
She suggested another medicinal wine, named Hongmao Medical Wine, that was priced at 250 yuan and which claimed to contain leopard bones.
“Money cannot buy a genuine bottle of tiger bone wine because of its scarcity,” she said. “You can never find such medicine in the stores now. Wine containing real tiger bones is really more effective than others.”
However, doctors were quick to question the medicinal value of tiger bone tonic.
“It is the same as other medicinal wines,” said Yue Debo, a doctor with more than 20 years’ experience in the department of orthopedics at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. “It doesn’t have any miraculous effect.”
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Comment: by Willson 20111230:
“This is why I will never allow any of my companies or affiliates to do business with the Chinese. The Chinese are unworthy of respect and therefore unworthy of becoming a trade partner. The trade in tiger bone wine is not an underground industry. It is a mainstream industry condoned by the Chinese government. My companies will never sell technology to the Chinese so long as this and other wildlife is threatened with government sanctioning.”
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Comment: by Dan 2011-12-30 06:37
“China is shameful!“
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‘India lucrative target for illegal wildlife trade’
India remains a “lucrative target” in the USD 20 billion illegal trade of wildlife articles per year, an official document says.
“The most serious and immediate risk to many species is poaching for wildlife trade. …South Asian countries account for 13 to 15 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and so remain a lucrative target of the trade,” says the report prepared by the Environment Ministry.
Wild animals are killed for the flourishing illegal international trade in their skins, bones, flesh, fur, used for decoration, clothing, medicine, and unconventional exotic food, says the Environmental and Social Framework Document for “Strengthening Regional Cooperation in Wildlife Protection in Asia”.
Victims of the trade include the iconic tiger and elephant, the snow leopard, the common leopard, the one-horn rhino, pangolin, brown bear, several species of deer and reptiles, seahorses, star tortoises, butterflies, peacocks, hornbills, parrots, parakeets and birds of prey, and corals, it says.
Pangolines poached for TCM
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“The primary market for many of these products is outside South Asia, often in East Asia for items of presumed pharmacological utility,” says the document is prepared for financial assistance from the World Bank under regional International Development Association (IDA) window.
Noting that the wildlife trade is “big business”, it said due to the clandestine nature of the enterprise, reliable estimates of the composition, volume and value of the trade remain elusive.
“The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) suggests that the global value of the illegal wildlife related trade exceeds USD 20 billion per year and probably ranks third after narcotics and the illegal weapons trade,” it said.
The report says that poaching techniques are “extremely gruesome”.
“The more egregious methods include skinning or dehorning live animals, and transportation of live creatures in inhuman conditions,” it says.
Particularly damaging is the banned trade in tiger parts much of which is used for its presumed pharmaceutical benefits.
“The World Chinese Medicine Society has declared that tiger parts are not necessary in traditional medicines and that alternatives are available and effective. Yet the illegal trade still flourishes.
Poaching has become so intense that tigers have disappeared from many parks throughout Asia.
“Nowhere has the impact been greater than in India and Nepal which remain the bastions of tiger conservation,” says the document and added that Nepal has emerged as the transit hub for the trade in illegal wildlife commodities destined for consumption in East China.
“Laos is recognized as both a source and transit country while Viet Nam is a transit hub for illegal wildlife trade,” it says.
The economic value of the illegal wildlife trade is determined primarily by cross-border factors. Wildlife are poached in one country, stockpiled in another, and then traded beyond the South Asia region.
“Lack of uniformity in enforcement can result in migration of the trade to other countries with less stringent enforcement. The trade is controlled by criminal organizations which have considerable power over the market and the prices paid to poachers and carriers, making control of the trade even more challenging,” it says.
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‘SA breeders embrace growing Asian demand for lion bones’
Desktop activists have joined conservationists to raise awareness about the growing demand for lion bones from users of traditional Chinese medicine, but breeders have defended the right to hunt lions born in captivity.
Last week, the online activist organisation Avaaz.com launched a petition imploring President Jacob Zuma to ban the trade of lion bones. “As citizens from around the world with great respect for South Africa and its magnificent natural heritage, we appeal to you to ban the cruel and senseless trade in lion bones and organs, which is encouraging an industry that could drive lions to the brink of extinction,” says the petition, which garnered over 630 000 signatures in a week.
Lion bones are a sought-after ingredient used to make lion bone wine, a substitute for the traditional Asian cure-all, tiger bone wine, which fetches up to R250 000 a case at illicit auctions.
Conservationists have warned that captive breeding and canned hunting programmes in South Africa are providing a source for the lion bone trade. Canned lion hunting is legal in South Africa, as is the exporting of lion carcasses. Lion populations across Africa have been reduced by 90% over the past 50 years, but lion breeders say their operations have nothing to do with the continent’s wild populations.
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The price of trophies .
Breeders can benefit financially a number of times from the same lion. Cubs are often rented as tourist attractions and visitors pay to pet and interact with them. The fee paid by visitors is then fed back into captive breeding programmes. As adults, the lions are sold to hunters in canned hunting arrangements.
Farmers and hunting operators charge in the region of about $20 000 (R160 000) as a “trophy price” and hunters can expect to pay around $18 000 (R145 000) for other services, excluding taxidermy.
Bob Parsons – Elephant Killer
But the hunters are only interested in the head and skin of the lion, and often leave the bones with the breeder, who can then sell the bones, with a government permit, to Asian buyers for use in making lion bone wine.
It’s estimated that a complete lion skeleton can sell for as much as R80 000. Last year it emerged that over 1 400 lion and leopard trophies were exported from the country in 2009 and 2010.
According to the environmental affairs minister, in 2010, 153 live lions were exported as well as 46 lion skins, 235 carcasses, 592 trophies, 43 bodies and 41 skulls. It was noted that these figures were incomplete as the provinces had not yet captured all their data. Yet there was a 150% growth in exports of lion products from 2009 and 2010.
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‘Amplifying an illegal industry
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Chris Mercer, director of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting, said hunting captive-bred lions was “hideously damaging” to conservation. “It’s farming with alternative livestock. They’re only doing it because they make more money farming lions than they do sheep or cattle. But they don’t realise they’re harming the wild populations by creating and amplifying an illegal industry and allowing it to prosper,” he said.
Mercer said he believes the export of lion bones and in fact the entire canned hunting industry should be banned. He pointed out that there was a huge overlap between the rhino horn and lion bone trade. “Many of the Asiatic groups dealing with lion bones are the same people dealing with rhino horn,” he said.
He criticised government for taking a simplistic view of the matter and overlooking the dangers the lion bone trade poses. “The very people who are doing our rhino horn [poaching] are making money out of this. You can just imagine how the illegal trade is going to piggy-back itself onto this legal trade,” he warned.
Banning the entire trade will be difficult. There are almost 200 lion breeders in the country, many of whom are part of the powerful Predator Breeders’ lobby group. The breeding of lions for trophy hunting is a lucrative business. In 2009, the economic value of trophy hunting was estimated to be between R153-million and R832-million.
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Rapidly going extinct
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But Pieter Kat, director of the UK-based conservation organisation LionAid, said a lot could be achieved simply by placing a ban on the export of lion bones. Lions are listed on appendix two of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which means that a government permit is needed to export any lion products. “It will take a position of responsibility by South Africa to say, ‘No more, we will not allow this,'” he said.
“South Africa is within its rights [to] say no more export permits,” said Kat.
Kat said that while one could argue about the ethics of breeding lions just to be shot, it was important to bear in mind that whatever South Africa did in terms of its legal trade in lion bones would affect wild lion populations all over the continent.
Kat pointed out that there are only about 20 000 lions left on the entire continent – down from about 200 000 in the 1970s. In the past few years Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville have lost all their lions, while countries like Nigeria, Malawi and Senegal have only a few dozen lions left.
“We’re dealing with a species that is rapidly going extinct but because we are not really focused on lions – we’re talking about elephants and rhinos – it’s a silent extinction,” he said.
He warned that allowing the trade in lion bones to proliferate would stimulate a demand for the product. “Soon someone will [realise] it’s cheaper for to poach than to pay the owner of a captive animal to get the bones,” he said.
But Professor Pieter Potgieter, chairperson of the South African Predator Breeders’ Association, defended the industry saying there is little difference between breeding lions and any other mammal. “Chickens are killed by humans. How are lions different from them?” he asked.
“In principle a lion is not more or less than a crocodile, an ostrich or a butterfly. It’s a form of life. Breeding animals for human exploitation is a natural human process,” he said.
Potgieter said that breeding and hunting lions was only deplorable in the eyes of the public because a “sympathetic myth has been created about the lion as the king of the animals”.
He justified the practice, saying the export of lion bones is a legal trade authorised by the department of environmental affairs and denied that South Africa’s approach to captive breeding and canned lion hunting was feeding into the Asian demand for lion bones. “I don’t think that market is being created by the South African situation. That would happen anyhow and the more the Asian tiger gets extinct, the more people will try to get hold of lion bones as a substitute,” he said.
In 2007 former environmental affairs minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk attempted to put the brakes on canned lion hunting. It was widely reported that the activity had been banned in the country but this is not the case.
Some changes to legislation were made but the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Predator Breeders’ Association and overturned an attempt to enforce a two-year waiting period during which a captive-bred lion would be allowed to roam freely in an extensive wildlife system before being hunted, which conservationists had labeled an attempt to “pretend that the lion is wild”.
The environmental affairs department did not respond to questions by the time of going to print.’
‘Indonesian police seized 14 preserved bodies of critically-endangered Sumatran tigers in a raid on a house near Jakarta, a spokesman said Thursday. A man identified as F.R. was arrested Tuesday in a suburban area of Depok suspected of his involvement in the illegal wildlife trade, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told AFP.
“We confiscated whole preserved bodies of 14 tigers, a lion, three leopards, a clouded leopard, three bears and a tapir and a tiger head,” he said, adding that investigations were ongoing.
The Clouded Leopard (Neofelis nebulosa)
Is a felid found from the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China, and has been classified as vulnerable in 2008 by IUCN.
Poached for barbaric TCM.
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Cruel almost beyond belief, this Chinese farm breeds hundreds of tigers in rows of battery cages … so they can be killed and turned into wine…
King, the Siberian tiger, stares at me through the bars of his cage. His two beautiful, graceful companions pace back and forth across their tiny compound. They look crushingly bored. The most exciting thing they can do is paw mournfully at the dirty pools of rainwater on the floor of their cage.
Although the Xiongsen tiger park, near Guilin in south-east China, appears to be a depressingly typical Third World zoo, with a theme park restaurant and open areas where tigers roam, it actually hides a far more sinister secret: it’s a factory farm breeding tigers to be eaten and to be made into wine.
In row upon row of sheds, hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages which they never leave until they are slaughtered.
Visitors to the park can dine on strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and Chinese vegetables. Also on the menu are tiger soup and a spicy red curry made with tenderised strips of the big cat. Visitors can wash it all down with a glass or two of wine made from Siberian tiger bones.
A waitress at the farm’s restaurant tells me proudly: ‘The tiger meat is produced here. It’s our business. When Government officials come here, we kill a tiger for them so they have fresh meat. Other visitors are given meat from tigers killed in fights. We now have 140 tigers in the freezer.
“We also sell lion meat, bear’s paw, crocodile and snake. The bear’s paw has to be ordered in advance as it takes a long time to cook.”
Hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages by the Chinese TCM Cultists
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The waitress clearly does not care that she is selling meat and wine from endangered species. She is not worried that selling them is against Chinese and international law, and helps to fuel the poaching that is driving tigers to extinction.
Tigers and other endangered species are being reared on an industrial scale throughout China, despite international treaties forbidding this. The Mail discovered three factory farms breeding tigers in China. The Guilin farm alone has 1,300 tigers, including the incredibly rare and elusive Siberian sub-species.
It rears and slaughters Bengal, South China and White tigers. More than 300 African lions and 400 Asiatic black bears are also reared here for food and traditional Chinese medicines.
The Chinese authorities claim that farms like the one at Guilin are a vital part of the country’s conservation efforts, and that they will one day release these endangered creatures back into the wild.
But my visit to the Xiongsen Bear andTiger Mountain Village shows their real intention could not be more different. For the fact is that these animals could never survive in the wild.
Having spent their lives in tiny, battery-style units, they cannot hunt and would be dead within days of being released. Each shed at the tiger farm – and I saw at least 100 – houses between three and five tigers in a space no larger than a typical family living room. In relative terms, they have about as much space as a battery hen.
The animals have all been bred on the farm. The cubs are taken from their mothers at three months and put in a kindergarten. I saw around 30 tiger cubs in this creche, where they stay until they are old enough to be transferred to the battery units.
Many of the youngsters kept leaping at the fencing. The younger ones simply wanted to play like kittens. The older cubs were already showing signs of stress.
Tigers are naturally solitary creatures that roam over dozens of square miles, so it’s hardly surprising that life in the cages drives them insane. I saw numerous examples of stress-related repetitive behaviour.
The mature animals paced back and forth across their cages for hours on end – three steps forward, three steps back. Some hurled themselves at the bars of their prison cells, while others simply stared into space.
Over-crowding drives the creatures to attack each other, often resulting in death. Officially it is only the tigers killed in such fights that can be eaten or turned into wine. But it is clear that many of them die as a result of a bullet to the head.
They are not the only animals killed. For entertainment, visitors to the animal park can watch the ‘live killing exhibition’, a sick spectacle in which animals are ‘hunted’ and torn to pieces by tigers while onlookers cheer.
I watched in horror as a young cow was stalked and caught by a tiger. Its screams filled the air as it struggled.
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So Visit China – see its wildlife, taste its wildlife, souvenir its wildlife!Not sure what TCM says how Panda Parts heal you or give you a hard on?
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A wild tiger would dispatch its prey within moments, but these tigers’ natural killing skills have been blunted by years of captivity. The tiger tried to kill – tearing, biting at the cow’s body in a pathetic-looking frenzy – but it simply didn’t know how. Eventually, the keepers stepped in and put the cow out of its misery.
Virtually all the tigers from the Guilin farm end up at a winery 100 miles to the north, their carcasses dumped in huge vats of rice wine and left to rot for up to nine years.
The Chinese believe that the tiger’s strength passes into the wine as its body decomposes. They also believe that it is a powerful medicine that wards off arthritis, strengthens bones and acts as a general tonic.
Smelling like a mixture of methylated spirits, antiseptic and congealed meat, it is difficult to believe that anyone would willingly drink it, and yet people pay up to £100 a pint for it.
The Guilin farm also has its own small winery and acts as a distribution centre across China. The distribution manager showed me around with a Chinese tourist.
A small dingy office acts as the nerve centre of the warehouse. On the wall were charts showing that day’s deliveries of tiger wine across China. Six crates were sent to Wuhan and another to Tianjing. Six crates of ‘powdered bear’ were sent to Shanghai. Numerous other cities and countless deliveries were also listed.
We were led into the warehouse, where I was hit with the disgusting and potent aroma of tiger wine. I was led past countless crates containing the foul-smelling brew. In the corner of the warehouse was a huge brown earthenware vat. It must have held at least 50 gallons, and its contents were probably worth around £12,000.
“We have three ages of wine,” said the manager. “Three, six or nine-years old. It helps with arthritis and strengthens old people’s bones.”
She slid aside the lid of the earthenware vat to reveal a reddish-brown liquid with an overpowering smell of meths. A piece of string was pulled out of the vat. Attached to the end was a tiger’s rib cage. Small slivers of dark red flesh could still be seen clinging to the bone, even though it had probably been in the vat for at least three years.
The manager then filled up an old plastic water bottle with a pint of wine and handed it to my fellow tourist. He paid £30 for it.
Whatever westerners think of tiger wine, the Chinese regard it as a potent drink with almost magical qualities. In the past, a Chinese doctor may have prescribed small quantities of wine for a short period of time.
But in recent years, big companies have moved into the market and industrialised all parts of the industry. Now the wine is becoming an essential drink for China’s corrupt bureaucrats and the nation’s nouveaux riches.
Conservationists say tiger farming is not only barbaric, it could lead to the animal’s extinction in the wild.
“It is stimulating demand for meat and wine, and this will inevitably lead to more poaching,” says Grace Gabriel, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
“It costs £5,000 to raise a tiger from a cub to maturity in one of these farms, while it costs no more than £20 in India to poach one. On the market, a dead tiger can fetch £20,000.
“With such a huge margin, it is inevitable that more people will poach wild tigers if demand increases,” she adds. “There are only a few thousand tigers left in the wild, and the last thing they need is increased demand for their body parts.”
If present trends continue, tigers could be extinct in the wild within a decade. Three subspecies have already vanished. Chinese tigers are down to a pitiful 20 animals in the wild and are “functionally extinct”.
There are only about 450 Siberian tigers left in Russia’s Far East. The remaining 3-4,000 are sparsely scattered across India, Nepal and South-East Asia.
The trouble is that, as tigers become rarer in the wild, their ‘street value’ increases, which in turn encourages even more poaching.
Tigers have already become extinct in India’s most famous reserve at Sariska. Numbers have plunged in several other reserves, too.
Most of these tigers will have been sold to traders in China. The Chinese authorities do virtually nothing to clamp down on this illegal trade, and many corrupt bureaucrats and police earn substantial sums from it.
And demand is continuing to increase as ever more bizarre uses for tigers are promoted. Tiger whiskers are used to ‘cure’ laziness and protect against bullets. Their brains, when mixed with oil and rubbed on the skin, are promoted as a cure for acne. Penises are used as aphrodisiacs, while hearts apparently impart courage, cunning and strength.
Tiger farmers also have their eyes on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They hope that a huge influx of tourists will lead to increased demand for tiger wine.
Although it is illegal to trade internationally in such tiger products as wine, the Chinese are lobbying hard to get the law relaxed. This June, the Chinese Government is expected to press the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to allow the trade in ‘medicines’ such as wine produced from farmed tigers.
If agreed, it will lead to a massive increase in tiger farming and tens of thousands of these noble beasts will spend their lives in battery cages.
If the Chinese get their way, then it will almost certainly drive the tigers over the cliff into extinction.
It is almost too late to save this magnificent creature – but not quite.
I think of myself as child of Easter Island. I watch in admiration at a bird singing in a tree.
I watch in horror as the tree is felled by the grown ups and the bird flies away.
I tug on my father’s arm and ask why are the grown ups killing the trees dad?
He responds: “You’ll understand when you grow up.”
“The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”
~ Mark Twain
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Many of the younger generation cannot understand why the older generation is destroying the planet.
Without being ageist, there is a noticeable positive correlation between the young wanting to respect the planet, and the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation which largely remains hell bent on destroying it. Examples are everywhere. Start with our politicians and business leaders.
The Baby Boomers who find themselves aligned with those who respect the planet are noticeably in the minority amongst their peers and vice versa.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
‘A study conducted for the first time on five different species of owls inhabiting Western Maharashtra by city-based ornithologist Dr Satish Pandey, a fellow at the Maharashtra Academy of Science, has revealed how these nocturnal birds, who are losing their habitats because of environmental destruction and other superstitions, play a very important role in safeguarding the environment.
Five species of owls belonging to the Family Tytonidae (barn owl) and the Family Strigidae (Indian eagle owl, brown fish owl, mottled wood owl and spotted owlet) co-inhabiting the Deccan Plateau, the coastal region of Konkan and adjoining places were studied to understand preference habitat, reproductive behavior and food niche partitioning from 2005 till 2008.
The study was presented at the 7th Asian Raptor Research and Conservation Network (ARRCN) Symposium on Migratory Bird held in Korea last week on how the owl’s diet can be useful as a means of biological control of agriculture pests.
The studies revealed that spotted owlets and Indian eagle owls had the most compact habitat clusters, indicating a more specific habitat requirement, namely scrubs and grasslands. But since most of the lands are under development, the owls are fast disappearing. As the owls feed on rodents, birds, reptiles and insects and spend longer time in agricultural habitats, they are being subjected to anthropogenic activities and other interferences.
Mottled wood owls, which prefer deciduous forests are found only in India and inhabit mainly forested areas, where the use of pesticides is leading to problems as they eat rodents. Also, as they are tree-hollow nesting species, they are fast losing their nesting sites because of the felling of trees in their inhabited areas.
Barn owls and brown fish owls occupy more diverse habitats, with the latter preferring more water bodies and evergreen forests in their habitat. Due to the rampant destruction of rivers and lakes in Deccan Plateau, the birds have almost disappeared and have gone to upper streams as they require greener patches.
“We selected an area of 1,000 m radius around the nest in order to analyse the landscape features in all of the nest territories and visited each nest at least five times. We collected pellets of digestive foods, which were scrutinised by experts from Zoological Survey of India (ZSI),” said Dr Pande.
The study, besides understanding owl habitats, also included data based on Pianka Niche Overlap Index (PNOI) which suggested that spotted owlets and Indian eagle owls had maximum food overlap in terms of mammalian, avian, reptilian and insect prey, followed by barn owls and mottled wood owls, which are generalist feeders without specific food preference, while brown fish owls had the less overlap as they ate fish.’
. About Dr Satish Pandey:
‘Dr Satish Pandey is an Interventional Vascular Radiologist and Assoc. Professor of Radiology at BJ Medical College. He works in ecology and field ornithology and has made several video films on raptor ecology, marine ecosystem and conservation, has published more than 40 papers and has authored several field guides and popular books on ornithology, nature education, orchids and other subjects to promote conservation.’
Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor)commonly called ‘fairy penguins‘ due to their small fairy-like sizeArrive ashore after feeding on ‘pelagic’ fish in Bass Strait in southern Australia
‘Little Penguins‘, marine birds native to Australia and New Zealand, every day consume about their body weight (~1.2kg). Their prime food sources are small marine pelagic fish (76%) and squid (24%). [Source: ^http://www.graniteisland.com.au/pdf/parks_pdfs_little_penguins.pdf]
Given that the Australian breeding population across coastal southern Australia is estimated to be up to 500,000 individuals (Ross et al.1995), the Australian Little Penguin’s annual dependency on marine pelagic fish would amass over 450,000 kgs. (Calculation: 500,000 penguins * 1.2kg each * 76% = 456,000 kg of pelagic fish).
Their numbers are healthy but how vulnerable are they to pelagic overfishing?
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Australia’s industrial exploitation of Nature
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“Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate in the world. The destruction and fragmentation of habitat, particularly as a result of clearance of vegetation for agriculture, and the impact of feral animals and invasive weeds has had a substantial impact on our biodiversity.
Altogether, 18 mammal species have become extinct since the arrival of European settlers a little more than 200 years ago. Twenty percent of our remaining mammal species are threatened with extinction.”
Australia’s states of Tasmania and Queensland, with their renowned parochial politics, hold Australia’s unenviable reputation for the worst industrial exploitation of Nature and ecological destruction.
In Queensland the extent of recent land clearing is more than 425 000 hectares per year. Between September 2001 and August 2003, approximately 1 051 000 hectares of
woody vegetation was cleared (Government of Queensland, 2005). If Queensland were a country, it would rank 9th worst in the world in terms of land clearing. [^CSIRO]
In Tasmania, less than 20% of the original rainforest is left, and the ancient Styx Valley is being clearfelled and incinerated by Forestry Tasmania for loss-making woodchips at the rate of 300 to 600 hectares a year. [^The Wilderness Society] Many wild river valleys have been flooded by damned hydro, and vast landscapes scarred by mining and the groundwater toxins and tannins they leave behind. Industrial scale ecological destruction on an industrial scale still continues with parochial government’s short term profit myopia.
Tasmanian politics has a prejudiced record of giving industrialists free reign to plunder the environment, branded ‘primary industry‘:
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Tasmania’s ‘Primary Industry’ legacy
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Since 1803 when the whaling ship Albion took three whales at Great Oyster Bay, colonists started a whaling and fur seal industry based on the Derwent River as well as on Bruny Island and up the east coast of Tasmania to Spring Bay (Triabunna) and Bicheno
Convict slave labour from 1803 on the Derwent River was put to work deforesting the surrounding countryside
Convict ‘Piners’ from 1819 who ransacked the extremely rare (endemic) Huon Pine from forests near Macquarie Harbour
Since 1895, damming of rivers for hydro power and the flooding of many rivers and notably Lake Pedder in 1972 under the Great Lake Scheme, when the Hydro-Electric Commission became an industrial power unto its own from 1929 through to 1998
Mining since 1820 for coal, tin, copper, gold, lead, zinc, silver and nickel – leaving scarred moonscapes around Mount Lyell, Zeehan, Savage River, Mount Bischoff, along the Ringarooma Valley, Fingal Valley, Beaconsfield and elsewhere.
Since 1916, the construction of industrial and polluting smelters such as Amalgamated Zinc Company, then in 1921 the Nyrstar Hobart Smelter on the Derwent River, and since 1955 the Bell Bay aluminium smelter on the Tamar River
The industrial deforestation of Tasmanian forests since convict times, accelerating with the advent of steam and rail from the 1850s. By 1996, 43% of Tasmania’s original wet
Eucalyptus forest had been logged and still 64.5% remain open for logging including Eucalyptus regnans —the world’s tallest hardwood trees, many of which are over 400 years old. [Rainforest Action Network, p.8]
The recent establishment of industrial pulp and timber producer Ta Ann south of Hobart and the current proposed Gunns’ pulp mill which collectively threaten to woodchip most of Tasmania’s remaining unprotected native forests. The approval process has been plagued by political abuse of due process and special deals for Gunns, lacking independent scrutiny or community support.
Map of 19th Century whaling bases on Tasmania’s coastline
Spring Bay was part of that exploitative legacy
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So what has this disgraceful legacy got to do with Little Penguins arriving ashore after feeding on pelagic fish in Bass Strait?
Tasmanian-based industrial fishing corporation, SeaFish Tasmania, is set to double its annual fishing catch of pelagic marine fish in Bass Strait from August 2012 from 5,000 tonnes to 10,600 tonnes. The problem is that such a massive quota risks jeopardising the sustainability of the fish populations and the dependent marine species that depend upon them.
Pelagic marine fish live near the surface of the water and range in size from small coastal forage fish like small herrings and sardines to large apex predator oceanic fishes like Southern Bluefin Tuna and oceanic sharks. Also feeding on pelagic fish are Little Penguins and Australia Fur Seals. Pelagic fish habitat stretches from inshore waters to offshore over the Australian Continental Shelf and variable continental slope waters at depths from the surface down to about 500 metres.
Pelagic Pacific Jack Mackerel swim in schools near the sea surface
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Since 2000 Seafish Tasmania, based on Tasmania’s east coast at Spring Bay (Triabunna), has been the dominant Tasmanian fishing corporation targeting the Small Pelagics Fishery in southern Australian waters.
To date, Seafish Tasmania has relied upon its own purse seine trawler, the 800 tonne ‘Ellidi’ as well as two smaller contract vessels, to trawl for pelagic fish on the Continental Shelf off Tasmania. At its Triabunna factory, Seafish Tasmania converts its pelagic fish catches into a range of frozen seafood products for human consumption.both for domestic and export markets.
Seafish Tasmania also produces frozen Redbait specifically for the commercial Long-Line Fishing industry in Indonesia, the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Long Line Fishing is indiscriminate
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But Long line Fishing is cruel and indiscriminate. It is criticized worldwide for the merciless death of species such as sharks, turtles and seabirds, all caught unwanted as by-catch.
Trapped Humpback whale Caught in a Long Line Fishing net off Tonga in the Pacific in 2009
This heart-breaking image shows the desperate plight of a whale trapped by equipment used in a controversial form of commercial fishing. The southern-hemisphere humpback became entangled in a long line and was spotted by a snorkeller last week fighting for her life.
Long lines, sometimes covering several miles, are left floating out in deep waters and have baited hooks placed on them every few metres. The fishing method has drawn criticism from conservation groups because they indiscriminately hook unwanted catches such as passing turtles, sharks and whales. Sadly for this female, she got snared near the Tongan island of Vava’u. Despite breaking free, she was left wrapped up in the line with several of the hooks imbedded in her flesh.
The Marine Stewardship Council (has) allowed two eco-certifications for the use of longlines for swordfish fishing that will effect sea turtles and sharks drastically. For every swordfish caught, two sharks are killed. Every year 1,200 endangered sea turtles are hooked by longlines, resulting in drowning.
Seafish Tasmania’s involvement in GM aquaculture raises similar concerns about its ecological ethics.
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Australia’s southern ‘Small Pelagic Fishery‘
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Seafish Tasmania targets the following pelagic marine fish species in Australia’s southern Small Pelagic Fishery– Eastern sub-area for its chosen seafood markets:
Jack Mackerel
Blue Mackerel
Redbait
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However, this Small Pelagic Fishery (including eastern Bass Strait) provides a marine habitat to many diverse species of pelagic fish, which raises the question of the impact of non-targeted fish being caught as unwanted ‘bycatch‘?
Bass Strait lies between the Victorian coastline and the island of Tasmania, and the targeted Small Pelagics Fishery stretches eastward into the Tasman Sea. Its pelagic marine fish typically comprise Pilchards, Barracuda, Common Jack Mackerel (Trachurus declivis), Blue Mackerel (Scomber australasicus), Redbait (Emmelichthys nitidus), and Yellowtail Scad (Trachurus novaezelandiae). These attracts larger predators such as shark species preferring shallower depths such as Mako Sharks (Isurus oxyrinchus), Blue Sharks (Prionace glauca) and the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) which is listed by CITES as a protected species and similarly classified by the IUCN has having a ‘Vulnerable‘ status’.
But back in 1995, the marine health of Bass Strait was put into question when a 20-nautical-mile slick of dead pilchards was discovered off Devonport. The slick was thought to be caused by a mysterious deadly virus or toxin.
Tens of millions of pilchards were found floating dead in waters from Western Australia to Victoria. A merchant seaman had said that his cargo ship had sailed through 20 nautical miles of dead pilchards in Bass Strait. Mr Hamish Macadie, first mate on the Searoad Mersey, said he saw the fish about six nautical miles from the Devonport coast..
“They were floating on the water and were really thick in some areas. We sailed through about 20 miles of dead pilcards“, Mr Macadie said.
Australia’s coastal small pelagic fishes, which are often surface-schooling, includes several families which are often each represented by several species (see Allen 1997, Randall et al. 1997, Gomon et al. 2008), including the Clupeidae (sardines, herrings and sprats), Engraulidae (anchovies), Carangidae (scads, jack mackerel), Scombridae (short mackerels), Atherinidae (hardyheads, silversides), Arripidae (Australian herring) and Emelichthidae (redbait). [‘Pelagic Fishes and Sharks‘ by Hobday, Griffiths,Ward 2009 : 4]. Other fish species of Bass Strait include Majo Sharks, Gummy Sharks, Threshers, Yellowtail Kingfish and Snapper.
The Small Pelagic Fishery of the Eastern sub-area…’is just the beginning’ But Seafish Australia’s utilisation of a factory trawler won’t be limited to just 10,600 tonnes of pelagic fish p.a. It has in its sights the entire Small Pelagic Fishery across to Perth.This will deplete the fish stocks of the protected Great White Shark, so lookout surfers at Ceduna!!
[Source: ^http://www.afma.gov.au/managing-our-fisheries/fisheries-a-to-z-index/small-pelagic-fishery/maps/]
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Commonwealth Marine Reserves – Flinders and Freycinet Sanctuary Zones
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The Small Pelagic Fishery set by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority ignores the marine ecologiccal values of the two delineated Sanctuary Zones of Australia’s South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserve Network. This includes the Flinders Commonwealth Marine Reserve and the Freycinet Commonwealth Marine Reserve (See green-shaded areas below).
Yet the Australian Fisheries Management Authority’s (AFMA) map invades two IUCN Sanctuary Zonesi.e. thetop two green shaded areas ‘Flinders’ and ‘Freycinet’
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This South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserve Network has been designed to contribute to the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA). The aim of NRSMPA continues to be to protect and conserve important habitats which represent all of Australia’s major ecological regions and the communities of marine plants and animals they contain.
Both the Flinders and Freycinet Commonwealth Marine Reserves were nationally proclaimed in 2007
March 2012: Tasmania’s parochialism again?
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In Tasmania, when it comes to industrial exploitation, the old parochial adage still prevails – ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know‘.
Director of Seafish Tasmania, Gerry Geen, is:
“Advisor to Australia and international governments on fisheries management and fisheries economics.”
The fishing quota limits (Total Allowable Catch) for this Small Pelagic Fishery are periodically assessed and determined by the committee of Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA), which takes advice specifically from the South East Management Advisory Committee (MAC). The fishing quota for this Small Pelagic Fishery for 2012-13 was agreed at a recent teleconference by the South East MAC on 26 March 2012, based upon the advise from the Small Pelagic Fishery (SPF) Resource Assessment Group (RAG).
Of note, two out of the ten members of the SPF RAG have pecuniary interests specifically in this Small Pelagic Fishery. Denis Brown has commercial fishing permits including in SPF zones A, B, C, and D and controls a Pelagic Fish Processors plant at Eden on the New South Wales south coast. While director of Seafish Tasmania, Gerry Geen, holds a Zone A purse-seine SPF Permit, four Tasmanian purse-seine Jack Mackerel Permits, a Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Trawl Boat SFR permits.
The reported minutes of the South East MAC on 26 March 2012 teleconference included Total Allocable Catch Declarations as follows:
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Recommended Total Allowable Catches for Blue Mackerel, Redbait and Yellowtail Scad for 2012/13 in the Eastern Zone
~ by the Small Pelagic Fishery (SPF) Resource Assessment Group (RAG)
Total Allowable Catch Recommendation #1:
“Blue Mackerel 2,600 (Tier 2)
Redbait 6,900 (Tier 1)
Australian Sardine 200 (Tier 2)”
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Total Allowable Catch Recommendation #3:
“Increase the Jack Mackerel (east) Recommended Biological Catches (RBC) from 5,000 tonnes to 10,600 tonnes, subject to conditional support from the RAG’s conservation member and the RAG’s recreational member.”
June 2012: Factory Freezer Vessel (FV Magiris) chartered by Seafish Tasmania
10,000 tonne Lithuanian-owned Factory Fishing Vessel ‘FV Margiris’ Recently contracted by Seafish Tasmania to trawl the Small Pelagic Fishery off Tasmania’s north east coastIts draft of 5.5 metres is too deep for Spring Bay, so it must be operated out of Devonport
[Source: ^http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=1220863]
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‘Super trawler operator Seafish Tasmania yesterday indicated it had begun the process of having the Lithuanian vessel Margiris registered as Australian.
Director Gerry Geen said the company aimed to start fishing in Australian waters (the Small Pelagic Fishery) by August 2012…
The company has been granted an 18,000 tonne annual quota. Greens Leader Nick McKim told parliament the increase had been allowed because of the super trawler, Margiris.
“The Commonwealth quota for jack mackeral will be doubled” he said. “Now this makes a mockery of claims that it is science underpinning these decisions because, of course, the doubling has only occurred because this super trawler has applied to come down and work in Australian Commonwealth waters.”
Vast swathe … the Margiris supertrawler. Photo: Greenpeace
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‘Say hello to our fishing future. It’s called Margiris. If ever Australians needed convincing that the global appetite for fish is our problem too, this supertrawler is it. Twice the size of the previous largest vessel ever to fish our Commonwealth waters, it measures 142 metres in length and weighs 9,600 tonnes. Its Dutch owners are changing its flag of registration from Lithuanian to Australian.
By August, it is scheduled to be roaming between the Tasman Sea and Western Australia in pursuit of 17,500 tonnes a year of small pelagic fish.
Tagged … Greenpeace activists write on the side of the Margiris in the Atlantic off Mauritania in 2011
(Photo by Greenpeace, March 2011)
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But it’s not simply the size of FV Margiris that brings home the issue of rising industrial pressure on fish stocks. It’s the stark story of seafood market forces. Last March, in the Atlantic off Mauritania, Greenpeace activists wrote “plunder” on the side of the Margiris. They are campaigning against European operators who are taking West Africa’s fish, leaving locals catchless.
In Australia, the Margiris is set to catch the same sort of fish – jack mackerel, blue mackerel and redbait – and freeze them into blocks for export.
The destination of the catch? “The large majority will go to West Africa for human consumption, as frozen whole fish,” said Seafish Tasmania director Gerry Geen.
Australian fishers have long sought to exploit the country’s so-called “small pelagics”, which are prey for bigger fish such as tuna and marlin. Seafish Tasmania is partnering with ship owners Parlevliet & Van der Plas to do this on a scale previously unseen.
Alarms have been raised in other global fisheries about these mainly Europe-based small-pelagic hunters.
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According to The New York Times, stocks of Jack Mackerel have dropped from an estimated 30 million metric tons to less than a tenth of that amount in just two decades.
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The minutes of an Australian Fisheries Management Authority advisory committee show serious debate about the introduction of the Margiris. They reveal that Mr Geen, who was on the committee, gave “background” input. But because of his conflict of interest, he did not contribute to a recommendation to double the Australian eastern jack mackerel catch to 10,000 tonnes.
This has given the single greatest fillip to the Margiris venture. Mr Geen told the National Times the Margiris would take less than 5% of the total stock of small pelagics, as measured by surveys of egg production by the target species.
“I think people are worried about the size of the vessel, but that is really irrelevant,” he said. “It’s the size of the total allowable catch that counts.”
Other advisory committee members pointed to the ecological impact on existing fishers of taking so much of the small pelagics, even though these catches are outside state waters.
A coalition of global, national and state environment groups has written to Fisheries Minister Joe Ludwig, calling for the Margiris to be banned.
Right now it’s moored in the Netherlands, and Greenpeace is keeping an eye on its movements. Watch this space.’
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..didn’t have to wait long..
Greenpeace in The Netherlands: ‘Stop Exporting Overcapacity’
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On 28th June 2012, Greenpeace activists in the Netherlands attached themselves to the mooring ropes and chained the ship’s propellers of the super trawler FV Margiris, to delay its journey to Australia to serve Seafish Tasmania’s plans to overfish 18,000 toinnes of pelagic fish.
Greenpeace spokesman Nathanial Pelle said:
“Really this is to demonstrate that the European Commission, which has committed to reducing its capacity, shouldn’t be allowed to ship its oversized fleet off to other fisheries around the world and that goes for Australia as well.”
“The MAC noted some concerns raised in relation to the proposed TAC for jack mackerel (east) suggested that a super trawler might also have differential impacts on the stock and ecosystem.”
~ South East Management Advisory Committee (MAC) Chairman Steve McCormack noted.
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Of Course the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) celebrated Seafish Australia’s strategy as “A Shot In The Arm For Tassie Economy” , given that the MUA is only narrowly self-interested in its members. MUA Assistant National Secretary, Ian Bray, said the news of new jobs was welcome.
“This initiative is welcome news for Tasmania’s seafarers and maritime workers”, Mr Bray said. “This is just the kind of development the Tasmanian economy needs. We’re pleased that there will be new jobs for Tasmanians”, Mr Hill said.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has written to me outlining his findings in response to my complaint that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) erred when setting the quota relevant to the super trawler Margiris.
The Ombudsman found that AFMA did not follow the law when the South East Management Advisory Committee finalised its recommendation for the quota relevant to the super trawler.
In particular the Ombudsman found that one of the members of that committee had a financial conflict of interest but was allowed to remain in, and contribute to, discussions about the quota.
As a direct result of the Ombudsman’s investigation AFMA has undertaken remedial and corrective steps to address the substantive issues arising from my complaint.
The Ombudsman has also forwarded material to the Federal Government’s review of fisheries legislation.
Seafish Tasmania has responded by attacking the Ombudsman which is clearly a case of attacking the messenger who found very serious problems with fisheries management in Australia.
Seafish claims the Ombudsman “had completed the investigation and found nothing to report’’. In fact the Ombudsman’s letter to me of 18 December 2012 outlining the results of the inquiry runs to four pages and includes the findings “processes relating to a scheduled meeting of the South East Management Advisory Committee (SEMAC) on 26 March 2012 were not in accordance with legislative requirement’’ and that the “conflicted SPFRAG [Small Pelagic Fishery Resource Assessment Group] members did not seek approval to remain at, and participate in, group deliberations after declaring the conflict [of interest]’’.
In other words my complaint to the Ombudsman that AFMA did not follow proper process when it set the quota relevant to the Margiris has been upheld.
Seafish claims I didn’t release the letter because it didn’t suit my “agenda’’. In fact I decided not to release the letter during the Christmas/New Year holiday period because it was simply too important a document to bury during the holiday period and subsequent bushfire emergency. Moreover I did hand the letter to the Mercury newspaper this morning, well before Seafish issued its media release.
Seafish notes the Ombudsman’s report (which it claims to have not seen) offers no comment on Director Gerry Geen or Seafish itself. But in fact Mr Geen is well known as being the relevant member of SEMAC and SPFRAG.
Seafish claims my comments last year about the Ombudsman investigating “other matters’’ was some kind of beat up. But in fact it was the Ombudsman who
referred to other matters being under investigation and the Ombudsman’s letter to me does in fact address other issues, and in particular the conflict of interest and communications difficulties associated with the SPFRAG.
Seafish Tasmania claims there is now no question mark over the quota relevant to the Margiris. But in fact all the Ombudsman says is that “it does not necessarily follow that errors in the SEMAC process operate to invalidate the TAC [Total Allowable Catch]’’ and goes on to note the review of fisheries legislation which is still ongoing.
That there were at least very serious problems within AFMA is beyond question for all, it seems, other than Seafish Tasmania. The Federal Government has already identified the need for a roots and branch review of fisheries legislation and the Ombudsman’s letter to me lists 11 AFMA actions as a result of my complaint.
Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)
Also known as Green Turtle, Black (sea) Turtle, or Pacific Green Turtle and can be found on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The species is listed as ‘Endangered‘ by the IUCN and CITES and is protected from exploitation in most countries where it is illegal to collect, harm or kill them.
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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s seven natural wonders. It is the world’s largest reef system stretching over 2,600 kilometres from Lady Elliot Island off Gladstone Harbour up to the top of Cape York Peninsula at the Torres Strait.
The Great Barrier Reef has 411 types of hard coral, comprises 900 islands and 2,900 individual coral reefs as well as many cays and lagoons . It is a natural sanctuary for 36 species of marine mammals including whales, dolphins and porpoises, some 1500 fish species, 134 species of sharks and rays, 4,000 types of mollusc and is home to 215 species of birds either migrating, nesting or roosting on the islands.
The Reef and associated beaches provide vital habitat home to six species of sea turtles which swim vast distances to the reef to breed including the Green Sea Turtle. Both the Green Sea Turtle and the unusual Dugong are species particularly threatened with extinction due to Aboriginal Poaching and associated non-traditional commercial exploitation.
Dugong (Dugong dugon) feeding on Sea Grass Meadows
(Photo by Barry Ingham)
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Dugongs?
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Dugongs were hunted toward extinction by European colonists during the 19th Century for their meat and oil.
Most Dugongs now live in the northern waters of Australia between Shark Bay and Moreton Bay particularly in the Torres Strait and along the Grest Barrier Reef. Ongoing ‘traditional’ hunting is driving populations close to extinction. Consequently the IUCN lists Dugongs as ‘Vulnerable‘ to extinction, while the CITES limits or bans the trade of derived products.
Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders ignore this and continue to poach Dugongs for non-traditional commercial exploitation. ^Read about Dugongs
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In 1981, The Great Barrier Reef was inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List under all four natural World Heritage criteria for its outstanding universal value:
Outstanding example representing a major stage of the Earth’s evolutionary history
Outstanding example representing significant ongoing geological processes, biological evolution and man’s interaction with his natural environment
Contains unique, rare and superlative natural phenomena, formations and features and areas of exceptional natural beauty
Provide habitats where populations of rare and endangered species of plants and animals still survive
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The IUCN-protected Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is 345,000 square kilometres in size; five times the size of Tasmania or larger that the United Kingdom and Ireland combined!
As scientists have become to understand more about the Reef’s complex ecosystem, they have discovered that damaging fishing practices, pollution and coral bleaching exacerbated by increased sea temperatures due to global warming are compounding to jeopardise the Reef’s future.
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The ecological protection and management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is delegated by the IUCN to the safe custody and sovereignty of the Australian Government, currently under the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke MP. The management task in turn has delegated the responsibility to The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority guided by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act 1975 (Cwlth), which is headquartered in Townsville and with regional offices in Cairns, Mackay, Rockhampton and Canberra.
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“The Great Barrier Reef is internationally recognised for its outstanding biodiversity. The World Heritage status of the Reef recognises its great diversity of species and habitats. Conserving the Reef’s biodiversity is not just desirable – it is essential. By protecting biodiversity, we are protecting our future and our children’s future.”
Because of the Reef’s magnificent biodiversity, diving on the Reef is very popular
(Diver with Green Sea Turtle)
Tourism Australia promotes the Reef thus:
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‘Once you’ve experienced the Great Barrier Reef you will know why it is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Diving and snorkelling are a must. Stay at a one of the many heavenly island resorts. Charter a yacht and sail The Whitsundays. Find your own uninhabited island. Where else in the world can you find a beach where the only footprints in the sand are your own.
There are hundreds of dreamy islands and coral atolls on the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, so take your pick. Luxury lovers and honeymooners will be in heaven on Lizard Island, exclusive Bedarra or privately-owned Double and Haggerstone Islands. For a wilderness experience, bush camp on Fitzroy Island or trek the Thorsborne Trail along mist-cloaked Hinchinbrook Island. Day trip to Green and Fitzroy Islands, snorkel the brilliant coral reefs of the Low Isles or sea kayak around Snapper Island, Hope Islands National Park with an Aboriginal guide. Townsville, Port Douglas and Lucinda are just some of the mainland gateways.’
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And at the northern tip of the Reef, Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands are promoted thus:
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‘Sitting just north of Cape York, between Australia and Papua New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands are made up of 274 small islands, only 17 of which are inhabited. These communities have developed a unique blend of Melanesian and Australian Aboriginal cultures. Get a glimpse with a trip to Thursday or Horn Island, the group’s most developed islands. Learn about the local pearling and fishing industry on Thursday island, reached by ferry from Cape York. Visit the museum, art gallery and historic World War II sites on Horn Island, accessible by flight. Both islands are blessed with pristine beaches, azure waters and vivid fringing reefs supporting dugongs and sea turtles.’
Australia’s disturbing reality on The Reef and at Cape York
There are thousands of native Sea Turtles dying on our Great Barrier Reef as a result of:
Water Pollution from sewage and stormwater
Water pollution and farm pestidices, herbicides and fertilisers
Damaging Fishing Practices
Illegal Poaching
Cyclones and Flooding
Tredging of Gladstone Harbour and associated coastal Industrial Development
Bulk Cargo Ships leaking contaminants
Gladstone Harbour dredging in 2011-12 by the Gladstone Ports Corporation and LNG
..continues to muddy Barrier Reef habitat and destroy Sea Grass Meadows critical to Sea Turtkes and Dungongs
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The recent Queensland floods and cyclones have starkly shown the impacts of water pollution on the marine environment. Pesticide and mud pollution from out-dated farming practices has led to a massive spike in Dugong and Sea Turtle deaths.
In addition, poor fishing practices can still kill too many of our Sea Turtles and Dugongs, and industrial development is proliferating along the coast and removing remaining habitats, such as Sea Grass Meadows that Sea Turtles and Dugongs depend on for their survival.
Over the past 12 months, more than 1,400 turtles and 180 dugongs have washed up on our beaches. Clearly our Reef is under enormous pressure and our wildlife is suffering.
The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage global icon and something that Queenslanders are proud to be the custodians of. It is unacceptable to many of us that the Reef would be under this amount of pressure. We’re not alone in these concerns – UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee also expressed serious concern recently about the long-term health of the Great Barrier Reef.
Oil is seen next to the 230-metre bulk coal carrier Shen Neng I about 70 kilometres east of Great Keppel Island, 20100404.
“damage to the reef is significant, with large parts of Douglas Shoal “completely flattened” and marine life “pulverised”.(Maritime Safety Queensland/Reuters)
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‘130 turtles stranded this year‘
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‘The Scientific Advisory Committee has been charged with the task of investigating this year’s spate of marine animal deaths in Gladstone Harbour.
Responding to calls for all results to be made public, the environment minister’s office provided the following data:
130 turtle strandings were reported; 11 of those were released or in rehabilitation
Of 119 turtles found dead in the harbour this year, only 24 had autopsies conducted
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Of those 24 turtles, 13 were identified as dying from human activity (11 boat strikes and two undetermined); 11 were identified as dying from natural causes (10 from ill health and disease and one undetermined).
Eight Dugongs have been found dead. One was killed by boat strike and one from netting. The remaining six were too badly decomposed for autopsies.
Five Dolphin deaths were reported. One was caused by unspecified human activity. The remaining four were too decomposed.
Because floods damaged seagrass levels, marine animals are more vulnerable to human activity.’
This dead dugong was found on Witt Island by Clive Last (July 2011) who is increasing worried by marine animal deaths in Gladstone Harbour (Great Barrier Reef).
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‘Another dead Dugong has been found in Gladstone Harbour, and the man who found it wants some answers.
Clive Last, who in May discovered a dead dolphin on Turtle Island, was shocked on Friday afternoon when he found the body of a dead Dugong on Witt Island.
Mr Last is wary of suggestions marine animal deaths this year can be attributed to boat strikes and net fishing. He said those explanations didn’t match his observations on the harbour.
“I honestly believe it’s either starvation (from damaged seagrass meadows) or there is something in the harbour,” Mr Last said. “Right now, Turtles and Dugongs are continually coming up. That means there is (something) going on.”
He believed the Dolphin he found in May had no injuries to indicate it had been killed by boat strike or fishing nets.
The Department of Environment and Resource Management reported the Dolphin’s body was too decomposed to conduct a necropsy.
Mr Last said, once again, the dead Dugong’s body showed no sign of injury. He took five photos and called Queensland Parks and Wildlife.
Mr Last, whose work requires him to spend a lot of time on the harbour, is increasingly disturbed by the trend of dead marine animals in Gladstone Harbour.
“If I don’t see another one after today, I’ll be very happy,” he said. “I’d also be very happy if someone would come up with the truth about what is really killing them. “You can’t keep saying it’s boat strike, when I’ve got photos showing it’s not boat strike.”
Mr Last said he was worried the scientific advisory committee’s investigation into the deaths in Gladstone Harbour would take too long to come up with results.
DERM (Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management) could not be contacted over the weekend.
The list goes on:
The dead Dugong found on Witt Island was the latest in a long, mysterious list of marine animal deaths this year.
Three dead Dolphins were found in Gladstone Harbour in May, within two weeks of each other.
The latest discovery is the fourth Dugong found dead in the harbour since May
More than 40 Turtles have washed up dead in the harbour since April. The Turtle deaths have been the subject of intense debate between environmentalists and commercial fishermen.
Marine experts from various organisations have told The Observer seagrass levels, damaged by the floods, are putting stress on the animals.
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“LNG will deliver billions of Australian Dollars to be shipped overseas as profit we will be left with the rotting carcasses of dead dugongs, poisoned water tables, destroyed farmland and a bill for the infrastructure the council builds for them.”
~ Comment by Chris Norman from Agnes Waters (July 2011)
Heinous cruelty as Aborigines hack live pregnant Green Sea Turtle
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There’s tension in far north Queensland between Traditional Hunting rights (Ed: read ‘perversion’) and the protection of Turtles and Dugongs, and it is resulting in some horrific treatment of native animals.
Transcript from ABC Broadcast (extracts of video added):
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CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Protected Dugongs and Sea Turtles are being cruelly slaughtered in Queensland’s Torres Strait to supply an illegal meat trade.
Tranquil coastal tip of Cape York Peninsula and the Torres Strait
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An investigation by 7.30 has found deeply confronting footage that we are about to air. It shows the brutal methods used to hunt the animals, with turtles being butchered alive and dugongs drowned as they’re dragged behind boats.
The investigation throws into sharp relief the conflict between Indigenous Australians and animal rights activists over traditional hunting and exposes a black market in animal meat.
And a warning: this report by Sarah Dingle and producer Lesley Robinson contains disturbing images and coarse language.
SARAH DINGLE, REPORTER: At the northern-most tip of Australia lie the serene islands and waters of Queensland’s Torres Strait, the birthplace of Native Title. But on those beaches, there’s a slaughter underway.
7.30 travelled to far North Queensland where IT entrepreneur turned eco warrior Rupert Imhoff has been investigating the fate of threatened turtle and dugong populations. And what he found is shocking. A turtle lies tethered for up to three days, waiting to die.
Green Sea Turtles are routinely tethered by rope by local Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander men in the shallows, then inverted on to their backs so that they tire from struggling and often drown.
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RUPERT IMHOFF, ECO WARRIOR: They dragged it out of the water, flipped it on its back. You could see it was already terrorised. It was flapping around madly. And they came up with this concrete block and basically tried to slam it in the head, obviously to stun the animal. Didn’t quite work.
Man uses a concrete block and throws it twice at the Turtles headbut the female Turtle continues to flap. She has no voice.
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SARAH DINGLE: The images become even more confronting.
RUPERT IMHOFF: Before they started hacking off its fins, they wanted to check if it was pregnant, and sure enough this turtle was a mature aged turtle. Had up to 125 eggs in it. It was gonna be the next generation of turtles, but they decided to cut it up right there and then.
Aboriginal man knifes into the womb of the female Turtle to see it if pregnant – she is.
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SARAH DINGLE: Even as it’s hacked, the turtle clings to life, apparently in agony for seven and a half minutes.
The man then starts hacking into the live healthy TurtleLeft flipper already hacked off, the still live turtle has its right flipper hacked off, while the men keep it helplessly lying on its back
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RUPERT IMHOFF: Didn’t actually die until they took off the bottom shell, they actually peeled off the shell and then it just let out one gasp – one last gasp of air and passed away.
SARAH DINGLE: Using a hidden camera, Rupert Imhoff spent two weeks in the Torres Strait filming the hunting of sea turtle and dugong which are both listed as vulnerable to extinction.
RUPERT IMHOFF: They go out, they spear them at sea, they then tie the tail to the back of the boat and they hold the head underwater. And it can take up to seven and a half minutes again, so I’ve been told, for that dugong to drown.
Speared Dugong, still alive is tied by the tail fin to the side of the boat so it drowns as the boat returns to shore
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SARAH DINGLE: Here, a Dugong is methodically carved up for consumption. For anyone else, this kill would be illegal, as dugong are protected under federal law. However, the Native Title Act allows traditional owners to hunt to satisfy their personal, domestic or non-commercial communal needs.
Anywhere in Australia, this horrific cruelty would be will illegal. But in Queensland alone, Native Title hunting is exempt from animal cruelty laws. Animal rights activists are appalled.
Lawyer Rebecca Smith was a paid consultant on the turtle and dugong hunt for the Torres Strait Regional Authority.
REBECCA SMITH, LAWYER: Most conservation groups won’t touch this issue. It’s just too hard, too prickly, too sensitive. It’s often deemed – people who are opposed to traditional hunting are often called racist, but there’s nothing racist about saying, “This is cruel. We’ll move on from there. We’ll do this humanely now. We’ve progressed.”
SARAH DINGLE: Aerial surveys of dugong and turtle numbers are imperfect and no-one knows exactly how many there are. Green sea turtles face an extra pressure. They’re by far the turtle species most intensively hunted for their meat. But locals say there are bigger threats for turtle and dugong.
???: You know we are under threat from pig predation, our – one of the greatest, biggest rookeries in the Southern Hemisphere on Cape York, Rain Island, is under threat from climate change, but we seem to be concentrating I think far too much on, you know, Indigenous people hunting them.
SARAH DINGLE: What is known is that the Great Barrier Reef is a last stronghold. It’s home to the biggest sea turtle rookery in the globe and one of the world’s largest population of dugong.
Cairns-based Colin Riddell calls himself “The Dugong Man”. A former abattoir worker, he’s an unlikely but tireless campaigner for animal rights.
COLIN RIDDELL, ANIMAL RIGHTS CAMPAIGNER: I have to pursue it to the end because otherwise the end may be for the animals.
SARAH DINGLE: Colin Riddell’s investigations have revealed the slaughter goes on far to the south in coastal Queensland waters.
Green Island is one of the jewels in the crown of Cairns tourism. We’ve been told just last week at this spot Indigenous hunters chased down and took a green sea turtle in full view of shocked tourists. There’s no way of knowing where those hunters came from, but locals say this is a weekly occurrence on this island.
STEVE DAVIES, TOUR OPERATOR: They can be out there a lot, you know – three, four, five times a week. They come across in quite large tinnies with large outboard motors on board and they chase the turtles till they’re completely and utterly exhausted.
SARAH DINGLE: The culture clash between hunters and tourists has led to heated confrontations.
INDIGENOUS HUNTER (Amateur video): This our land! We don’t list end to your shit, mate! We can do anything on this land we wanna do, mate!
SARAH DINGLE: This video was shot two weeks ago by a tourist and given to 7.30. It shows an allocation between a tour boat and three Indigenous hunters.
INDIGENOUS HUNTER (Amateur video): Ya just don’t tell us what to do on our land! You’re not from this f***in’ land; we are! We’re the traditional owner! We own every f***in’ reef around here, mate!
SARAH DINGLE: It’s not clear what they’re hunting for, but there’s no mistaking the tensions.
INDIGENOUS HUNTER (Amateur video): You f*** off back to your country. This is my country, c***.
SARAH DINGLE: Is there a sense in your area that the Indigenous hunters are untouchable?
STEVE DAVIES: Without a doubt. And they believe they’re untouchable.
SARAH DINGLE: But there are conservation efforts.
Well away from the glitzy marinas and the tourist strip, here in the industrial area of Cairns is the town’s only turtle rehabilitation centre. It’s run on the smell of an oily rag. Here, injured and starving turtles are treated and brought back to full health.
Today, Jenny Gilbert and her team are readying a 180 kilogram breeding age female green sea turtle for release. By the look of things, this 80-year-old turtle has already survived a number of hazards.
Turtles like this are being hunted not traditionally, but for a very modern purpose. Our investigations have revealed the hunt is feeding a flourishing black market.
JAMES EPONG, MANDUBARRA LAND & SEA CORP.: Well nine times out 10 the illegal trade is to sell the meat for the benefit – for grog money or drugs.
SARAH DINGLE: And can you can make a buck out of it?
JAMES EPONG: Yes. There’s one person that we know of in Yarrabah made $80,000 one year.
SARAH DINGLE: James Epong is a Mandubarra man who lives on his traditional lands an hour south of Cairns and Yarrabah. The Mandubarra have declared a moratorium on taking turtle and dugong from their see country, but around them, the illegal meat trade continues.
JAMES EPONG: I myself went to a pub on a Friday afternoon to go and have a coldie with one of me mates and was approached by some other Indigenous people with trivac (phonetic spelling) meat for sale, which was turtle and dugong.
SARAH DINGLE: On four separate occasions 7.30 has confirmed multiple eskies arriving on the afternoon flight from Horn Island to Cairns.
RUPERT IMHOFF: I do not know 100 per cent for a fact what was in those eskies, but I have heard numerous reports and been told by the islanders themselves that they are transporting an excessive amount of turtle and dugong down to Cairns. Now on my flight I think there was about six or seven eskies that come off and I’ve been told that it almost a daily routine.
SARAH DINGLE: Indigenous sea rangers are employed and equipped by governments to care for marine wildlife. This esky was addressed to a ranger.
RUPERT IMHOFF: From what I understand and what I observed and what I spoke to the islanders about is the head hunters on all these islands are actually the rangers themselves. Now this money has gone into their pockets. It’s gonna help them buy outboard motors and help them basically go and hunt these turtle and dugong down in bigger numbers.
SARAH DINGLE: Were any of the people you saw hunting and killing animals rangers?
RUPERT IMHOFF: Yes, they were 100 per cent.
SARAH DINGLE: Did you pay those people in your footage to do what they were doing?
RUPERT IMHOFF: We did not pay a single person any money while we were up there.
SARAH DINGLE: And the illegal trade continues further south.
SEITH FOURMILE, CAIRNS TRADITIONAL OWNER: I know that there’s a lot of non-Indigenous people that are doing it as well.
SARAH DINGLE: Are they doing the hunting or are they involved in other way?
SEITH FOURMILE: They’re involved with the trading of it, or selling it and passing it down, and some of the turtle meats has gone far down as Sydney and Melbourne.
SARAH DINGLE: And it’s not just dugong and turtle meat being sold. Traditional owners from Cape York are pushing to end the indiscriminate slaughter and stop the esky trade.
Sea Turtle air freighted from Cairns to Sydney and MelbourneNothing to do with ‘Traditional Hunting’, which is a low-life smokescreen for what it really is: Illegal Wildlife Poaching and Trade for personal commercial profit.
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FRANKIE DEEMAL, TURTLE AND DUGONG TASKFORCE: We don’t have that kind of legislative assistance to do that. What do you do when you confront a rogue killer?
SARAH DINGLE: And we’ve heard a lotta people talk about rogue killers. Who are these rogue killers?
FRANKIE DEEMAL: They’re there.
SARAH DINGLE: Who are they?
FRANKIE DEEMAL: They know who they are.
SARAH DINGLE: For those with Native Title rights, customs can change.
LOCAL MAN: We’re gonna name this turtle Bumbida (phonetic spelling), after our grandmother.
SARAH DINGLE: But the Mandubarra people at least have sworn to protect these animals.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Sarah Dingle with that report, produced by Lesley Robinson.
And 7.30 contacted the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. In a statement it said it takes, “the claims very seriously and will investigate all reports of illegal hunting and poaching”.
You can follow the progress of the turtles released in this story by going to the sea turtle satellite tracking page.
Editor’s note: (April 16) the ABC also approached the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) several times over the course of a week prior to broadcast but their spokesperson was unavailable for comment.
Watch the entire Documentary aired nationally across Australia in March 2012:
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING ANIMAL CRUELTY WHICH MAY OFFEND. WE INCLUDE IT TO PORTRAY THE REALITY OF AUSTRALIA’S TREATMENT OF TURTLES AND DUGONGS IN THE NAME OF ‘TRADITIONAL HUNTING’
[Source: ‘Hunting rights hide horror for dugongs, turtles’, by reporters Sarah Dingle and Lesley Robinson, documentary presented by Chris Uhlmann, 730 Programme, 20120308, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ^http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3448943.htm]
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‘Queensland to outlaw Dugong-hunt cruelty’
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Animal activists have welcomed moves by the Queensland Government to outlaw hunting-related cruelty to dugongs and turtles.
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‘Under the Native Title Act, traditional owners are allowed to hunt Turtles and Dugongs.’
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Footage aired on the ABC in March showed animals being butchered alive by some Indigenous hunters and sparked an investigation into the practice.
Queensland Fisheries Minister John McVeigh yesterday introduced legislation into Parliament to outlaw any unreasonable pain being inflicted during hunting.
The RSPCA’s Michael Beatty says the Government should be commended.
“No-one thinks – including the Indigenous leaders – that this type of cruelty, if you like, is necessary,” he said.
Mr Beatty says authorities need to continue to work with traditional owners. “It isn’t simply a case of just outlawing it, it really isn’t that simple because obviously it has to be policed as well,” he said.
But animal activist Colin Riddell says the hunting should be banned altogether. “People flock to Australia to see our Great Barrier Reef and see those beautiful animals and I fear for the day that my children, your children don’t get to see those animals,” he said.
Native title hunting rights would not be extinguished by the Bill.’
But this heinous cruelty by Indigenous Australians has long been know by the Australian Government..
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Back in 2011: ‘Call for inquiry into marine animal poaching‘
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The Federal Opposition has called for a judicial inquiry into Dugong and Turtle poaching in far north Queensland. Tourism operators say tourists have been exposed to mutilated and slaughtered turtles on island beaches, off Cairns. Four far north Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) candidates say they want that stopped at key tourism sites.
Pictures of a mutilated turtle found on Green Island by tourists at the weekend have prompted public outrage. The animals are legally protected but the Native Title Act allows for hunting by traditional owners.
But Federal Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says legal hunting is not the problem.
“The advice we have from Indigenous leaders is that the vast bulk of hunting is poaching,” he said. Mr Hunt says inaction on poaching is causing problems.
“There really has to be a crackdown on poaching,” he said. “The vast bulk of the take of Turtle and Dugong is coming from poaching. “There is a trade in illegally obtained meat and animal product. “This is a complete breach of the law.”
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority is investigating the issue.
Back in 2010: ‘Cairns Turtle and Dugong activist campaigns against slaughter caught on video’
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Former union activist turned environmental defender Colin Ridell, who counts Bob Irwin, John Mackenzie, Derryn Hinch and Greg Hunt MP among his loyal following, says the silence is deafening from the government to stop slaughter of turtles on the waters around Cairns.
Riddell is campaigning to reduce the taking of turtle and dugong, that is occurring under the protection of Native Title, until a complete scientific study is done to determine the actual numbers to be taken.
“It will be tightly controlled by the EPA and the elders with a permit system, that is monitored by special investigators. I and other indigenous elders support a moratorium to determine the take,” Riddell says. “The skulls of each to be kept to determine actual permitted numbers taken, as is done in other permit systems.”
He says that any breach would carry a substantial penalty, however advocates a complete ban in green zones, like all our coastal tourist areas. “I don’t want international tourists and interstate visitors to take home horror stories.”
The campaign follows the leaking of a graphic video showing a turtle having its flippers hacked off while still alive. RSPCA Queensland has called for a review of traditional hunting.
“It’s just not good enough, this is a violent and obscene way to treat these animals, ” Cairns resident Colin Riddell told CairnsBlog. “Any indigenous person is allowed to kill sea turtles and dugongs for weddings or funerals, but it has far beyond that, and is being commercially moved around the state.
“I don’t want international tourists and interstate visitors to take back horror stories home,” he says Riddell, who has taken his campaign to every State and Federal Government minister.
“I’ve written to the Minister for Local Government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships who have acknowledged my letter,” Riddell says. “The replied thanking me for me letter and said it ‘will be actioned as appropriate.’ However I have received no response,” he says.
Riddell has also wrote to Greg Combet for support, who he engaged with as a Manufacturing Workers Union site convener at the Australian Defence Industries Benalla plant. He says that Environment Minister Peter Garrett has also given him the “bum’s rush.”
“I received a response from the ‘Parliamentary Clearance Officer’ however it was totally unsatisfactory,” Riddell said. “I told them to get my message Peter Garrett, which was a direct result of Jim Turnour’s and Peter Garrett staffers. Weak efforts.”
Another response from the International Whaling Commission fell on deaf ears. “I asked them why we condemn Japan when Australians do the same,” Colin Riddell said. Julie Creek, responded. “Your message was deleted without being read.”
The original poster of the graphic video says that it’s fair enough if you have to kill turtles because it is a “traditional right” but who cuts the leg of a cow first and let it die in its own blood?
“No one is going to starve in Australia because we stop the killing of turtles. Australia earns millions of dollars with the tourism industry – with tourists who come to dive with turtles and in the same country we torture the turtles to death,” the anonymous poster wrote. “Species will vanish forever and in the end it does not matter whose fault it was. This is not a question of human races this is a question of respect and ethics towards other creatures.”
Colin Riddell and the RSPCA are trying to track down who shot the video and where it was taken, so they can investigate the incident. It is believed it was filmed in North Queensland mid last year.
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“Until now cruelty to animals using traditional hunting methods has been put in the too hard basket by governments.”
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Mark Townend of the RSPCA said. “Far from it, he said. We have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island elders who support us on this issue.
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“Hunting from tinnies with rifles is not traditional.”
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“We’re committed to ensuring that any breaches of the Animal Care and Protection Act are fully investigated while at the same time taking into consideration traditional hunting rights,” RSPCA chief inspector Michael Pecic says. “We can’t do this alone. We’re a charity and yet it appears we’re the only organisation that is taking this matter seriously.”
“We have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island elders who support us on this issue,” Riddell says. “Hunting from tinnies with rifles is not traditional. Leaving turtles and dugongs to be butchered alive and left to die on the beach is not traditional. We’re not attacking the indigenous community. This is simply not an appropriate way to kill these animals.”
James Epong, son of an aboriginal elder says that Ma:mu traditional owners have a right to hunt for protected species such as dugong and marine turtles that is recognised by Australian Law.
“Our Ma:mu traditional owners, who are also called the Mandubarra mob, have put aside some of these rights and signed a Traditional Use Marine Resource Agreement so they can protect rather that exploit dugong and marine turtles,” James Epong says.
The agreement for their turtle business is co-ordinated through the Mandubarra Land and Sea Corporation and was finalised in June 2008.
“I am very proud to see that Ma:mu traditional owners are prepared to sacrifice rights and traditions, for the sake of helping threatened turtle and dugong stocks recover,” Epong says. “Keep in mind the Ma:mu people are setting aside hunting and cultural practices that go back tens of thousands of years for the future benefit of all Australians.”
In 1996, a landmark High Court decision concerned with particular pastoral titles, was passed regarding Native Title hunting rights. The decision did not allow anyone simply to claim Indigenous links and then hunt and kill native animals anywhere in Queensland. It authorised any legitimate native title holder to hunt and kill for genuine sustenance and other needs and without first obtaining a licence, but only in areas over which native title is held by that group.
The decision did not allow native title owners to trap or kill wildlife for commercial purposes, however Colin Riddell says that this is occurring. “These area being transported through the Cairns Airport in Eskys,” he says.
Riddell says on his website that the 1996 decision says nothing one way or the other about using modern weapons like guns and powered boats to undertake traditional hunting. It is interesting that the use of harpoons, outboard-powered boats, and steel axes to kill the crocodiles as an exercise of native title hunting rights.
“It seemed to concern nobody on the High Court bench, with the possible exception of Justice Callinan. Followers of native title developments need to keep in mind the distinction between exercising an established native right in a modern way, as in the Yanner case, and the loss or abandonment of traditional and established native title rights themselves, as found by the trial judge to be a fatal flaw in the Yorta Yorta decision.”
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Commercial Exploitation of Hunting and Fishing Rights
This issue, namely the extent to which the holders of native title may exercise the relevant rights in a “modern” fashion, and indeed the connected issue of whether they might even commercially exploit those rights, are difficult ones. Whilst not directly in issue in the Yanner case, these issues are of considerable importance in the broader scheme of Australian native title law – and are yet to be answered conclusively.
Some important developments in this area are taking place in Canada. In the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1997 decision in Delgamuukw v British Columbia, the majority judges noted that, while the rights of Indigenous title holders in that jurisdiction are not limited to engagement in activities which are aspects of practices, customs, and traditions integral to the claimant group’s distinctive Indigenous culture, lands held by Aboriginal title cannot be used in a manner that is irreconcilable with the nature of the claimants’ attachment to those lands.
So, for example, tribal hunting areas may not be “strip mined” or, so it would seem, “hunted out” or “fished out” in a large-scale commercial operation. Contrast this with small-scale trading between local Indigenous people and others, for which there is some historical and anthropological evidence in Australia and elsewhere.
There are important legal differences between the doctrines of Aboriginal title in Canada and Australia, but there are also some important similarities which indicate that these Canadian developments might in the future be of relevance in Australia. Of course, it is also important in Australia to note that the Commonwealth Native Title Act moderates but does not destroy the capacity of the States and Territories to regulate the exercise of native title rights along with other rights, as in fishing, conservation, and safety legislation which might apply equally to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.
“Jim Turnour says this is a racial issue,” Colin Riddell says. “You know, I’m disgruntled as well. You know what I do. I tell you what, I’m begging people to vote for Warren Entsch in and get rid of Jimmy,” he says.
See the shocking video here…
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING ANIMAL CRUELTY WHICH MAY OFFEND. WE INCLUDE IT TO PORTRAY THE REALITY OF AUSTRALIA’S TREATMENT OF TURTLES AND DUGONGS IN THE NAME OF ‘TRADITIONAL HUNTING’
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has been aware, so is complicit, immoral, incompetent and so entire Board should now be immediately sacked, and any government employee (rangers or otherwise found to have been in anyway involved with the killing of Dungongs or Turtles or trading in their body parts.
The killing of Dungongs or Turtles in Australia is to be immediately policed and investigated jointly by the Australian Government, whatever the causes of the deaths
The Australian Government needs to amend Australia’s Native Title Act 1993 and Australian Crimes Act 1914 to make any cruelty toward any wildlife in Australia and its territories a criminal act under Australian Crimes Act. Traditional Hunting that involves cruelty is to be outlawed. It is Commercial Exploitation of Traditional Hunting and Fishing Rights.
“It could take 20 years or more for the Great Barrier Reef to recover from three kilometres of destruction caused by the grounding of a Chinese coal ship, authorities have revealed. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says the damage to the reef is significant, with large parts of Douglas Shoal “completely flattened” and marine life “pulverised”.
Australia’s Wildlife Hate
(Photo by Peter Culley taken on a backroad to Goolwa, Currency Creek, South Australia.)
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Peter’s comments:
‘An Australian icon…I was taken by the colours, textures and moronic behaviour of the idiot/s who did this in the first place… For instance there was evidence they had initially fired the first shot at a further distance but not satisfied with that they moved closer… There was a very good chance they were peppered by numerous richochets… candidates for the Darwin Awards…It’s always the minority that ruin it for others…’
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The following article was initially written by Tigerquoll entitled ‘Animal abuse inculcates social deviance‘ and published on CanDoBetter.net 20100403.
Posted April 3rd, 2010 by Tigerquoll. Additional material has been added.
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On 29-Mar-2010, Chris Palmer, the self-confessed serial roo shooter on CanDoBetter wrote:
“My son is an up and coming roo shooter to at the age of 4 he can skin and gut a roo nearly as quick as me and over the last 4 weekends he has shoot over 50 roos with only 8 misses they still didnt get away tho like always dad was there to clean up the mess.”
Clearly, this individual values his behaviour of slaughtering kangaroos acceptable to the extent he is inculcating in his young son his same values, attitudes and practices from an early age. Shooting wildlife is a violent crime against the natural animal kingdom. We are not savages anymore. We don’t have to kill wild animals. It is a choice and an immoral act. Clean kills are wrong but also occasional. The suffering death of a bullet injury by a 4 year old followed up with a knife or blunt axe to the joey reflects a vicious and depraved existence.
Orphaned kangaroo ‘joey’
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Cruelty Connections
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‘According to a 1997 study done by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Northeastern University, animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people and four times more likely to commit property crimes than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.
There’s something uniquely sickening about cases of animal abuse that outrages the community more than most crimes. To hear of a defenceless creature being brutalised by a cowardly attacker can get the blood of even the gentlest soul boiling.
Serial killer Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer from Wisconsin (USA) started on animals before moving on to humans.
Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism.
In his childood he had put dogs heads on stakes.
(Photo: AP)
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This week we learnt of the shocking case of Snowy, a much loved family pet suffering horrific injuries at the hands of a torturer. The 18-month-old cat’s ears were mutilated and he had been set alight. Also this week charges against the man believed to have tortured Buckley, a puppy who had his ears and tail hacked off, were dropped amid fears that the case would not stand up in court.
In recent months there have been multiple cases of animals being tortured and killed in a trend that appears to be Australia wide. It seems no animal is immune from such callous attacks; pets, wildlife, even dolphins have been targeted by individuals who derive some sort of thrill from inflicting pain on an innocent creature. Despite the increasingly violent and sadistic nature of these attacks and the public’s growing disgust, offenders if caught can expect little more than a slap on the wrist.
More often than not these cases don’t reach the courts but the few that do demonstrate our judicial system’s failure to treat animal abuse as a serious offence. Magistrates can impose jail terms of up to 5 years but it is extremely rare for a custodial sentence to be handed down in an animal abuse case. Despite extensive evidence linking cruelty to animals to serious violent offences against people, the judiciary continue to treat such crimes as largely trivial matters.
If our system is designed to punish as well as prevent serious criminal offences then surely greater attention needs to be paid to those who mistreat animals, particularly those who torture and kill for fun. The direct relationship between animal abuse and violent crime has been recognised by the FBI since the 1970s. Many of the world’s most notorious killers have long histories of animal abuse; Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Edmund Kemper and Albert DeSalvo better known as the Boston Strangler were all fond of torturing animals. In Australia murderers such as Paul Charles Denyer, Robert Barrett and Ivan Milat are known to have tortured animals long before they started killing people.
What greater motivation do our legislators and Courts need to treat animal cruelty with the utmost seriousness? Simply cautioning offenders is not good enough.
In the US, there has been a growing trend towards toughening laws to make animal abuse a felony rather than a misdemeanour. Penalties for individuals who engage in deliberate animal cruelty have been increased, dramatically in some states. England has similarly strengthened its animal welfare laws but in Australia we continue to treat these heinous crimes as minor offences not worthy of lengthy custodial sentences despite profilers and psychologists telling us that one of the strongest precursors to violent crime including murder is a history of animal abuse. Tough penalties including incarceration must be handed down for serious animal abuse cases.
You don’t need to be a psychologist to work out that only a uniquely depraved individual could ignore the agonised cries of a defenceless animal and continue the ghastly business of inflicting maximum pain and suffering.
To allow such cruel and sadistic behaviour to go unpunished is not only morally reprehensible, it may very well have dire consequences when at some point these offenders turn their particular brand of rage and fury on the rest of us.’
‘Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last twenty-five years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty.‘
The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children. Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.
The line separating an animal abuser from someone capable of committing human abuse is much finer than most people care to consider. People abuse animals for the same reasons they abuse people. Some of them will stop with animals, but enough have been proven to continue on to commit violent crimes to people that it’s worth paying attention to.
Virtually every serious violent offender has a history of animal abuse in their past, and since there’s no way to know which animal abuser is going to continue on to commit violent human crimes, they should ALL be taken that seriously. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Allen Brantley was quoted as saying
“Animal cruelty… is not a harmless venting of emotion in a healthy individual; this is a warning sign…” It should be looked at as exactly that. Its a clear indicator of psychological issues that can and often DO lead to more violent human crimes.
“So much of animal cruelty… is really about power or control,” Lockwood said. Often, aggression starts with a real or perceived injustice. The person feels powerless and develops a warped sense of self-respect. Eventually they feel strong only by being able to dominate a person or animal.
Sometimes, young children and those with developmental disabilities who harm animals don’t understand what they’re doing, Lockwood said. And animal hoarding – the practice of keeping dozens of animals in deplorable conditions – often is a symptom of a greater mental illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Just as in situations of other types of abuse, a victim of abuse often becomes a perpetrator.
According to Lockwood, when women abuse animals, they “almost always have a history of victimization themselves. That’s where a lot of that rage comes from.”
In domestic violence situations, women are often afraid to leave the home out of fear the abuser will harm the family pet, which has lead to the creation of Animal Safehouse programs, which provide foster care for the pets of victims in domestic violence situations, empowering them to leave the abusive situation and get help.
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“A significant amount of data, both anecdotal and empirical, show that animals are often killed or harmed to intimidate, frighten or control others including battered women or abused children.”
Whether a teenager shoots a cat without provocation or an elderly woman is hoarding 200 cats in her home, “both are exhibiting mental health issues…but need very different kinds of attention,” Lockwood said.
Those who abuse animals for no obvious reason, Lockwood said, are “budding psychopaths.” They have no empathy and only see the world as what it’s going to do for them.
History is full of high-profile examples of this connection:
Patrick Sherrill, who killed 14 coworkers at a post office and then shot himself, had a history of stealing local pets and allowing his own dog to attack and mutilate them.
Earl Kenneth Shriner, who raped, stabbed, and mutilated a 7-year-old boy, had been widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in dogs? rectums and strung up cats.
Brenda Spencer, who opened fire at a San Diego school, killing two children and injuring nine others, had repeatedly abused cats and dogs, often by setting their tails on fire.
Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” who killed 13 women, trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes in his youth.
Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of the 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy.
In 1987, three Missouri high school students were charged with the beating death of a classmate. They had histories of repeated acts of animal mutilation starting several years earlier. One confessed that he had killed so many cats he’d lost count. Two brothers who murdered their parents had previously told classmates that they had decapitated a cat.
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had impaled dogs’ heads, frogs, and cats on sticks.
More recently, high school killers such as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel in Springfield, Oregon, and Luke Woodham, 16, in Pearl, Missouri, tortured animals before embarking on shooting sprees. Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 classmates before turning their guns on themselves, bragged about mutilating animals to their friends.
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As powerful a statement as the high-profile examples above make, they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the whole truth behind the abuse connection. Learning more about the animal cruelty/interpersonal violence connection is vital for community members and law enforcement alike.”
It is a fact that acts of animal cruelty lead to forms of cruelty against humans.
“A criminologist and forensic psychologist at Bond University, said the torturing, maiming and killing of animals were red flags of someone capable of future violence against people.”
They go on to state specific cases: “Archibald McCafferty, Sydney’s ‘Kill Seven’ murderer, used to strangle chickens, cats and dogs before killing people.”
“In Victoria, serial killer Paul Charles Denyer disembowelled a native cat and cut the throat of its kittens.” He went on to become the Frankston killer’ murdering Elizabeth Stevens, 18, Debbie Fream, 22, and Natalie Russell, 17, in Frankston Victoria in 1993.
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING ANIMAL CRUELTY WHICH MAY OFFEND. WE INCLUDE IT TO PORTRAY THE REALITY OF AUSTRALIA’S TREATMENT OF KANGAROOS
(To play video press the arrow in centre of video; to stop video press the pause button on bottom left)
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2011: Hobart’s Jamie Peter Smart decapitates 3 kittens
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‘A Hobart court has heard the DNA of a man accused of decapitating kittens was found on their bodies.
Jamie Peter Smart, 31, is appearing in the Hobart Magistrates Court, accused of decapitating two kittens and of strangling a third.
Prosecutor Mel Jerrim told the court Smart and two other men had gone to the Glenorchy home of the kittens’ owner in March last year because they thought she had thrown rocks to break up their all-night party.
The court was told the owner had refused to open the door and had called police when one of the men smashed the window of her car with a blockbuster. The first officer on the scene has given evidence of finding the body of one kitten, the head and body of another and just the body of a third.
The court heard a full DNA profile matching Smart’s was found on the decapitated kittens. DNA profiler Rita Westbury told the court it was unusual to get a full match from DNA transferred by contact. Normally such a match would come from a body fluid sample.
It suggested the kittens were handled for an extended period of time or with force.
Ms Westbury agreed it was not impossible that Smart’s DNA could have been transferred from blood on an axe handle to the kittens by a third person.
‘A Glenorchy man has been found guilty on two counts of killing an animal. The three five-week-old kittens were found by police after being called by the kittens owner in March 2010. Magistrate Olivia McTaggart found Jamie Peter Smart, 32, guilty of decapitating two kittens.
The Magistrates Court in Hobart heard Smart’s DNA was found on the kittens. The court heard Smart and two other men went to a house in Hopkins St, Moonah, bordering a party they were attending in March 2010. The trio accused the female occupant, and owner of the kittens, of throwing a rock through a house window at the party. The woman denied the accusation before one of the men smashed the window of a car parked in her driveway.
When the woman looked out her window a short time later she said she saw Smart with the head of a kitten in his hand baiting a dog.
Smart had pleaded not guilty to three counts of killing an animal. He will be sentenced next month.
‘The connection between animal abuse and violence against humans is well documented. Melbourne’s serial killer Paul Denyer and mass murderer Martin Bryant are amongst those whose history began with the abuse of animals.
Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people at Port Arthur (Tasmania), tortured and harassed animals at age seven, which was one of the first red flags he was a person with severe conduct disorder symptoms. Bryant was given an air rifle for his 14th birthday. Martin at 19 would kill dogs and shoot at tourists with an air gun which he always carried with him.
Martin Bryant tortured animals
Now, a university study has established a connection between domestic violence and animal abuse. The Monash University study showed just over half of family violence victims reported the perpetrator had also abused the family pets, and many women said they had delayed leaving a violent relationship out of concern for their pet’s welfare.
Interview by ABC Reporter Lisa Whitehead in 2007:
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‘RIC HOLLAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, LORT SMITH ANIMAL HOSPITAL: We had a dog that had clearly been punched in the face with severe facial injuries and broken limbs. Probably it had been struck with a cricket bat or a baseball bat.
DR SASHA HERBERT, LORT SMITH ANIMAL HOSPITAL: The male owner said that the dog had run through a plate glass window to get to him. I suspect the dog had been thrown through the plate glass window rather than having run through it itself, or it else it was so frightened that it was running from something rather than to something.
JUDY JOHNSON, EASTERN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SERVICE: The threats to the pets are used as a controlling mechanism by a perpetrator to say, “Look, remain with me. If you leave I will do such and such. I will either shoot the dog, I’ll strangle a cat, I’ll skin the guinea pigs, and when I find you and the children eventually, I’ll do the same to you”.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Those threats against the family pets may never be carried out, but they’re powerful coercive tool used to trap women and children in the web of domestic violence.
DR NICOLA TAYLOR, CENTRAL QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY: They can be used to keep them silent, particularly in the case of children where child abuse is concerned. They can also be used to make the victims stay in the relationship, or to make them behave in ways that they wouldn’t normally behave.
LISA WHITEHEAD: The stories workers in the field of domestic violence have been hearing for years are now being reaffirmed by the findings of the first Australian study examining the link between pet abuse and domestic violence.
DR SASHA HERBERT: And so have there ever been any injuries to your cat?
LISA WHITEHEAD: In the survey by Monash University and Melbourne’s Eastern Domestic Violence Service, more than half of the victims of family violence said their animals had been abused. The report mirrors the findings of research overseas where pet abuse is now seen as an indicator of other violent behaviour.
DR NICOLA TAYLOR: In the States they call it a “red flag” and what this essentially means is that if we know that there is animal abuse going on, then we should be looking more deeply for signs of child abuse and spousal abuse and other dysfunctional behaviour in that family.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Disturbingly, the Monash University study also found a third of the women living in crisis accommodation delayed leaving the family home out of concern for their pet’s welfare.
JUDY JOHNSON: There’s long stories of maybe the crisis line spending an hour on the phone to a woman talking to her about the possibility of finding a refuge, the difficulty of finding the refuge, and then at the very end the woman will say “And what about my horse?” And then you’re really back to square one because she won’t leave without the horse or the cat.
DR NICOLA TAYLOR: We need to also realise that the children very often have an attachment to these pets which can preclude them leaving.
TILLY: I had a family of dogs and they’re just as important to me as my two children. I didn’t want to leave them and find that he had hurt them or victimised them for me leaving.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Tilly was caught in a violent relationship for two and a half years. Desperate to get out, she tried in vain to find a temporary home for her dogs.
TILLY: I rang the RSPCA, I rang a lot of different agencies that … any agency that I could think of and there just was nothing out there. I couldn’t actually afford to take my dogs to a private kennel.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Finally, Tilly says she had no choice but to have one of her dogs put down.
TILLY: I sat in the car and cried for a quarter of an hour, shaking, and it was not something I had ever planned to do, and it’s certainly something that I never wish to ever have to do again.
LISA WHITEHEAD: It’s a grim option, but most domestic violence refuges can’t accommodate pets, and few animal shelters offer respite care for more than a week or two, leaving women and children little choice but to leave their pets behind. That’s the dilemma Naomi faced when escaping to a refuge with her children.
NAOMI: It was one of the first things that was actually brought up “What is he going to do to the animals?” They were really scared and really distressed about leaving them behind. They were their comfort. They were their safety and security.
LISA WHITEHEAD: But Animal Aid’s new Pets in Peril program came to Naomi’s rescue.
CLIENT: Good, good. I believe you have Gidget for me?
ASSISTANT: That’s right, yes.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Working closely with Melbourne’s Eastern Domestic Violence Service and a network of suburban vet clinics, Animal Aid finds safe homes for pets for a month or more. Coordinator, Debra Boland, says the importance of the program was brought home to her by one 12 year old girl.
DEBRA BOLAND, PETS IN PERIL: She used to ring on a regular basis just to … not to find out if they were OK, or not to find out when they could come home, but if they were still alive.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Experts say witnessing pet abuse as a child can have serious consequences.
DR NICOLA TAYLOR: We know essentially that children who do witness domestic violence and who presumably also witness this kind of abuse to pets, will be in a much higher risk category for developing anti social behaviour of some kind or another.
LISA WHITEHEAD: Animal Aid is just one small service helping to break that cycle of abuse, but recognition of the problem is slowly growing. The Queensland RSPCA runs a state-wide animal foster program for pets in crisis and other state RSPCAs have dedicated services in some areas. Now Melbourne’s Lort Smith Animal Hospital wants to get on board, working with domestic violence and child abuse agencies across Victoria. It plans to set up a 24 hour transport and boarding service for pets at risk.
RIC HOLLAND: That then gives a very clear access to the women in this situation to escape from a violent partner, be very confident that the pets are being cared for and once her life has got back on track, to actually reclaim the pets and bring them back into her and her children’s lives.
NAOMI: They were relieved, unbelievably relieved. We could actually start looking at books again, looking at books of different animals without the tears coming. They’re very excited about getting them back.’
2010: Baby Koala Shot multiple times, north of Brisbane
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A koala joey, affectionately known as Doug, lies on a pillow after being shot by a slug gun in Morayfield, north of Brisbane, on January 19, 2010.
[Photo source: ^http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/baby-koala-clings-on-to-life-20101109-17lsb.html]
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In January 2010, a baby Koala was shot multiple times and eventually died. It’s mother too was shot though survived, as explained in the following news article from Brisbane just two month ago:
‘A young koala is fighting for its life after it was wounded in a cowardly shooting at Morayfield, north of Brisbane.
Moreton Bay Koala Rescue president Annika Lehmann said the young male koala, estimated to be about eight or nine months old, had been taken to Australia Zoo for treatment.
The 940-gram koala, which had been named “Doug”, was in an induced coma.
He was found at the base of a tree at J Dobson Rd in Morayfield, Ms Lehmann said.
“Our rescuers got a call this morning about a little joey sitting at the trunk of a tree and his breathing was laboured,” she said. “Mum was 30 metres up in the tree, so we needed tree climbers to get her down, but the little boy was sitting at the bottom of the tree, so he was easy to get.”
Ms Lehmann said it was unclear how long Doug had been suffering as a result of the attack.
“He was very lethargic and dehydrated, so we don’t think this happened this morning or yesterday, it might have happened one or two days ago,” she said.
“At first we thought he had pneumonia, but when he had an x-ray they discovered the two bullets. “One is in the left chest cavity and one is in the lower abdomen.”
Ms Lehmann said Doug’s mother, which could also have been wounded, was also being assessed.
“I can’t really say much about her condition, but it looks like she’s OK,” she said.
Ms Lehmann said she had never seen a koala shot in the area before, although she was aware of several kangaroos shootings.
“Morayfield is one of those areas that we feel koalas are still relatively safe, so it was really bad that we found him there,” she said.
RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said the attack was disturbing, with the joey a “50/50 chance” of survival.
“At first glance, because it was a slug gun that was used, it’s probably kids but we really need to catch those who are responsible,” he said.
“All too often we’ve seen in the past the links between animal cruelty and other forms of violence down the track, so if this was kids they need to be made to be accountable for their actions now to nip something like this in the bud.”
Mr Beatty said people could call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or the RSPCA Cruelty Complaints Hotline on 1300 852 188 if they had any information on the attack.’
One of the kangaroos shot with an arrow in Melbourne, February 2009
[Photo: Melbourne Zoo]
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A man has been arrested over the shooting of two kangaroos with arrows in Melbourne’s outer north this month.
The 27-year-old man from Thomastown, a Northern Melbourne suburb, was arrested in Epping on Wednesday morning. Police say they raided two Thomastown properties and seized two bows, six arrows, an arrow quiver and camouflage clothing. The man is also being interviewed over another incident in which a person was allegedly shooting a bow and arrows in a Bundoora park close to other people.
Kangaroo left for dead with an arrow through its head – it survived
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An eastern grey kangaroo was found shot in the head with an arrow that had penetrated through the bone and into the nasal cavity at the University Hill Estate in Bundoora on May 9.
After an operation its prospects of a full recovery are good.
In an incident two days earlier at the same location, a juvenile female kangaroo was found with an arrow imbedded in its rump. Wildlife Victoria has offered a $10,000 reward to catch the person responsible.
Police charged the 27-year-old Thomastown man over the Bundoora shootings that horrified animal lovers this month.
One kangaroo survived after an arrow passed through its head while the other was found with an arrow in its rump. The man was arrested at his workplace on McDonalds Rd, Epping, on Wednesday morning and faces cruelty charges. A search of his house discovered two bows, five arrows, an arrow quiver, a paper target and camouflage clothing.
As he left Mill Park police station, he claimed he “didn’t know they were a protected animal” before driving away in a hotted-up car.
Detective Sen-Constable Dave Richards said police had acted on a tip-off.
“We had received a call from someone concerned for their (kangaroos’) well-being,” he said.
Sen-Constable Richards said police had received several tip-offs, particularly after Wildlife Victoria posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to a prosecution under the Cruelty Act.
The man was charged with reckless conduct endangering life and four counts of aggravated cruelty. He was bailed to appear at Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court on June 25.
Wildlife carer Belinda Gales, who has been looking after the injured kangaroos at Chum Creek Wildlife Shelter, said she was relieved to hear of the arrest.
She said it was a miracle the kangaroos – dubbed Beau and Hope – survived.
“Beau has made an amazing recovery. The only evidence is some small sutures on the side of his head,” Ms Gales said.
“Hope has taken a bit longer, because her wound got infected, but, hopefully, they will both be fine.”
Ms Gales hopes the kangaroos will be released in about two weeks.
“They have come to depend on each other, so they will stay here, and when they are both fit, they will be released together,” she said.
“We don’t know where they will go yet, but the main thing is that they go into a safe environment.”
Another five months later Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Stavropoulos was found guilty and jailed..
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‘A man who pleaded guilty in Melbourne to shooting four kangaroos with a bow and arrow has been jailed for 12 months.
Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Stavropoulos pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and hunting protected wildlife. His lawyer asked the court to consider a sentence Stavropoulos could serve in the community.
But Magistrate Jennifer Grubissa said a jail term was the only appropriate sentence to deter other people from doing the same thing. She said the offending was cruel and callous.
The four kangaroos were shot in Bundoora earlier this year.
One survived the attacks. Two died quickly. And a third kangaroo, with an arrow through its face, died after surgery.
The magistrate said Stavropoulos should have known that unless he was a perfect marksman his actions were unlikely to lead to a humane death for the animals.
Stavropoulos was ordered to serve a non-parole period of four months.
Stavropoulos is appealing the sentence. He was granted bail to face an appeal hearing in the County Court next March.
Well, Robin Hood aspirant Stavropoulos appealed the court’s decision, however the judge upheld the jail term..
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‘A judge has upheld a 12-month jail term given to a camouflage-clad man who shot and maimed kangaroos with a high-powered bow and arrow.
Justin Stavropoulos, 27, killed and maimed several kangaroos during hunting trips in Melbourne’s northern fringe during April and May last year. He was given a 12-month jail sentence, with a minimum of four months, in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court last October, but was bailed pending an appeal.
However, his sentence was today upheld by Victorian County Court judge Frank Gucciardo. Judge Gucciardo said Stavropoulos may not have appreciated the stupidity of his actions, but the community needed to be sent a strong message that violence towards animals was unacceptable. The judge accepted Stavropoulos believed the animals were game and could be hunted, but said it must have been obvious to him that using a high-powered bow and arrow would have caused the animals agony.
“How such a weapon can be so easily obtained can only engender dismay”, he said.
Stavropoulos must pay compensation of more than $4000 to wildlife authorities involved in rescuing the injured animals. Stavropoulos, of Thomastown, had pleaded guilty to charges of animal cruelty and hunting protected wildlife.
Outside court, animal activists welcomed the sentence.
2012: Kangaroos shot with arrows in outside Canberra
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Canberra kangaroos shot with bow and arrows at Mount Ainslie outside Canberra
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Kangaroos have been shot and killed with a bow and arrows in what park rangers are describing as a “distressing” spate of attacks on Mount Ainslie.
Two kangaroos were shot dead by arrows in the area in the past two weeks, and one had to be put down to end its suffering.
National Parks, Reserves and Rural Land manager Stephen Hughes said those responsible for the attacks could be charged a range of offences, which could see them face two years in prison and up to $22,000 of fines.
“It is very distressing to discover this illegal behaviour which, in addition to the suffering caused to the kangaroos, poses a public safety hazard,” he said.
“Mount Ainslie is a high use reserve which is particularly popular with late afternoon and evening walkers, joggers and cyclists.”
Police and park rangers have stepped up their monitoring of the area to try and catch the culprits.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report via the website at www.act.crimestoppers.com.au.
[Source: ‘Roos attacked with bow and arrow’, 20120207, ^http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/roos-attacked-with-bow-and-arrow-20120207-1t91v.html]
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The ACT Government is appealing to the public for information on the arrow attacks. There has been a number of attacks on kangaroos in Canberra’s Mount Ainslie Reserve using a bow and arrow.
Over the past two weeks members of the public have reported finding kangaroos that have been killed or injured with arrows. Rangers found one kangaroo already dead while another had to be put down to end its suffering.
ACT Parks manager Stephen Hughes says the use of a high powered bow and arrow is illegal and the incidents are extremely concerning.
“This is a professional bow and arrow that’s being used,” he said. “Our two major concerns are that apart from the obvious suffering caused to the kangaroos from this activity, it’s a serious threat to the many visitors that walk and ride in Mt Ainslie Nature Reserve every day.
“These people are being put at risk by this irresponsible behaviour.” Mr Hughes says the situation is distressing. “It’s unbelievable that people can find it entertaining to undertake this sort of activity in this day and age, shooting our native wildlife,” he said.
The ACT Government is appealing to the public to help catch the people responsible.
“ACT Policing has been notified of the illegal activity. Together with rangers, police will step up their monitoring of the area,” Mr Hughes said.
[Source: ‘Ainslie roos killed by arrows’, 20120208, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-08/ainslie-kangaroos-shot-arrows/3817500]
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Hobby Killers(killing for fun) continues to be funded by the New South Wales taxpayer
The Game Council NSW uses euphemistic terms like ‘hunt‘ instead of ‘kill‘, and ‘game‘ instead of ‘wildlife‘.
It is a deliberate strategy to demonise wildlife and to seek public legitimacy to kill for fun.
All types of characters are attracted.
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‘Animal Cruelty as a Predictor of Other Criminal Behaviours: Australian Data’
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‘As part of a larger study, a total of 200 participants was randomly selected from a New South Wales (NSW) Police database containing 947 individuals involved in animal cruelty incidents (Clarke, 2002; 2003). The sample included 38 female (M = 32.8 years, SD = 12.6 years) and 162 male (M = 28.4 years, SD = 8.7 years) participants. All participants were located using a NSW police service data collection system.
Conclusions:
Out of the sample of 200, 61.5 percent had alsocommitted an assault. Further, more than half of these individuals, all of whom had a history of animal abuse, also had convictions for driving offences, domestic violence and stealing. Other offences observed included drug and firearms offences, sexual assaults, malicious damage, assaulting police and street offences. It is noteworthy that as many as 17% of these offenders had also been sexually abuse.
In fact, animal abuse was a better predictor of sexual assault than previous convictions for homicide, arson orfirearms offences.
These data demonstrate that animal abuse is predictive of other criminal behaviours including violent crimes. These findings, therefore, indicate that identified animal cruelty needs to be given increased attention, both by law enforcement and service provision organisations, in efforts aimed at reducing or preventing criminal behaviours. Recognition of factors that may inadvertently be endorsing or aiding the maintenance of violent criminal and animal abuse behaviours is also important. Continued legalisation of recreational hunting may be one such factor.”
‘Research shows abusers believe abuse is justified‘
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A criminal psychology research article by Robert Agnew of Emory University, USA, entitled: ‘The Causes of Animal Abuse: A Social-Psychological Analysis‘ presents a theory that explains why individuals engage in animal abuse.
“First, I describe the immediate determinants of animal abuse. Animal abuse is said to result from ignorance about the abusive consequences of our behavior for animals, the belief that abuse is justified, and the perception that abuse is personally beneficial.
Second, I describe an additional set of factors that have both direct effects on animal abuse and indirect effects through the above three factors. These additional factors include individual traits, like empathy; the individual’s socialization; the individual’s level of strain or stress; the individual’s level of social control; the nature of the animal under consideration; and the individual’s social position.”
Animal abuse is no different to child abuse.
As disgusted as nearly all Australians are with animal abuse, Australia’s animal protection laws remain are inadequate both as a deterrent and as a punishment.
Wildlife killing and abuse is morally unacceptable and should be made a crime in the same way that killing or abusing humans is a crime. All that would be required is adding an animal section to the existing crimes acts around the country.
“A correlation between animal abuse, family violence and other forms of community violence has been established. Child and animal protection professionals have recognized this link, noting that abuse of both children and animals is connected in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. When animals in a home are abused or neglected, it is a warning sign that others in the household may not be safe. In addition, children who witness animal abuse are at a greater risk of becoming abusers themselves.” [American Humane Society]
Police are not required to enforce animal cruelty breaches.
Instead it is relegated to an under-resourced, under-equipped RSPCA, which is at best a toothless force. Australia should set a moral standard, establish a national squad within the Australian Federal Police to deal specifically with animal abuse. Australia needs to set up a central database on animal killers and abusers just as in the same way paedophiles are monitored as social deviants. No more abuse!
After the cat incident in Cairns, it seems logical that air rifles and bb-guns are those weapons that adolescents get access to before firearms.
Access and acceptance to such weapons tends to one more familiar with those on the land or a non-urban lifestyle. It may be worth investigating this in an article. Meanwhile, the ‘bevan’ mindset and animal cruelty that persists in some communities is an eye opener.
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“…Bruce Kringle, 60, lay on top of the animal in a desperate bid to stop the attack in Flowerdale (Victoria) just before 7am. A neighbour heard his cries for help and, after telling Mr Kringle to move off the animal, killed it with a blow from the back of an axe. Geoff McClure, compliance team leader for the Department of Sustainability and Environment, said a wombat attack was extremely unusual.”
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Frankly, I find this hard to believe and indeed suspicious. A ‘rogue wombat’? This is a wombat..
Australian Wombat – a docile noctural herbivore
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Wombats are native to this part of Victoria. If anything, it is the humans with axes that are the rogues. Did Kringle have a Alexander Pearcian moment after getting on the turps perhaps? Alexander Pearce was that notorious 19th Century convict in Van Diemans Land who butchered his fellow escapees with an axe then ate them, as the recent disturbing film portrays [Watch Trailer]. (To play video press the arrow in centre of video; to stop video press the pause button on bottom left)
The incident should be investigated by both a RSPCA vet and the police taking account of witnesses, and including a blood alchohol test on both the men, and a background check on Kringle and the ‘neighbour’ who killed it with an axe for any history of animal abuse.
Killing a wombat with an axe? How cruel, vicious and unnecessary!
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Kangaroo shooting ‘industry’
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‘Contrary to claims by regulatory agencies, the industry here in Australia is not fully professional, with a large proportion of casual shooters amongst licensees.
Kangaroos that are inaccurately targeted (not hit in the head from 80 to 200 metres at night) may suffer a painful, protracted death and their carcasses will not be utilised.
Pouch-young joeys are clubbed on the head!
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Young-at-foot are supposed to be shot, but since the industry is self-regulated, they are often left to die of starvation or predation.
Taken together, it is likely that up to a million young are killed annually as collateral damage and their carcasses not used. This is an unacceptable practice by international standards. They are the by-products of the greatest massacre of wild animals in the world. In a similar case of harvested terrestrial wildlife, the products derived from young Canadian Harp Seals – which are clubbed to death – have been banned in most westernised countries.
“It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife ….I’m here to tell you it’s just not right. Simply do not buy, use or eat kangaroo products”
The following article was initially written by Tigerquoll entitled ‘US Republican Katherine Harris – a Presbyterian ‘pro-lifer’ who treats animals like this!‘ and published on CanDoBetter.net 20091129.
Animal Cruelty by US Republican Katherine HarrisThe woman should have a criminal record and be prohibited for life from holding public office
(Photo: AP)
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In rural Wassau in the southern US state of Florida, the Wausau Possum Festival has become an annual summertime folk festival over the past forty years. This event is said to celebrate the role of the opossum in the survival of the populace of Northwest Florida during the depression. Aside from the music, a key feature is the fundraising possum auction for the local Wausau Development Club, which involves holding opossums by their tail. Possum is served up as a main fare.
The Virginia oppossum (Didelphis virginiana Kerr) is the only marsupial native to the south eastern region of North America and extending through Central America.
American Republican politician Katherine Harris of Florida is shown here in August 2006 during her campaigning for the 2006 Florida United States Senate election, holding a possum by the tail and is said to have bid $400 at the so-called ‘possum auction’.
According to the festival’s sick tradition, every election year, national and statewide candidates in Florida must prove they are good country folk by mistreating a possum at the Wausau Possum Festival. “Candidates bid for a possum, taking it out of a holding area by its tail and giving it a shake to terrify the creature into going limp so it won’t claw them. They’re later fed and released into the wild“.
The following advertisement by Pfizer Australia appeared in The Land newspaper on 22nd September 2011 in the ‘Livestock’ section on page 70. It was promoting Pfizer’s pharmaceutical vaccine product Gudair® Vaccine for the control of Ovine Johnes Disease (OJD) infecting Australian sheep.
The ODJ Menace may well be a threat to sheep flocks, but Wolves have got nothing to do with ODJ nor with Australian sheep!
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Wolves have got absolutely nothing to do with Ovine Johne’s Disease.
Wolves don’t even exist in Australia. They are native to continental Europe and Northern America where in fact the Gray Wolf continues to be persecuted and where Pfizer is headquartered, in New York City.
Ovine Johne’s Disease is a serious wasting disease that affects a wide range of animals, including cattle, sheep and goats in Australia. It is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium paratuberculosis) that live mainly in animal intestines but can also survive in the outside environment for several months.
This is the cause of Ovine Johne’s Disease, the bacteria ‘Mycobacterium paratuberculosis’
[Source: ‘Detection of Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis (Map) in samples of sheep paratuberculosis (Johne’s disease or JD) and human Crohn’s disease (CD) using liquid phase RT-PCR, in situ RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry’, by S. Roccaemail, T. Cubeddu, A.M. Nieddu, S. Pirino, S. Appino, E. Antuofermo, F. Tanda, R. Verin, L.A. Sechi, E. Taccini, A. Leoni published online 20 January 2010, Small Ruminant Research, ^http://www.smallruminantresearch.com/article/S0921-4488%2809%2900292-2/abstract]
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Pfizer’s advertised image above of an angry Gray Wolf is misleading, grossly inappropriate and unethical. It wrongly and unfairly demonises the wolf species as a predatory threat to Australia sheep. Wolves are not a threat to Australia sheep. They do not exist in Australia.
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Wolves have been persecuted since before Medieval times in Europe. The feelings of disdain and condemnation they held toward the wolf came from England and other parts of Europe in the form of fables, fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood), and so-called true stories that sometimes reached mythological proportions. The European hatred of the wolf was the result of much more than fantastical tales of the animal’s criminal nature.
Wolf Prejudice dates back to Little Red Riding Hood A Grimms Brothers fairy tale inculcating the ‘Big Bad Wolf ‘ fear to impressionable children
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During European colonisation of northern Americas, European puritan Pilgrims thought they had a great moral, religious, and economic duty to subdue the wolf, along with taming the ‘wild west’ wilderness, wholesale deforestation of forests and popping off ‘tribal savages’, otherwise known as Native Americans. The Puritans regarded the wilderness itself as a howling beast, a wolf inspired by the Devil.
So having established the wolf as a representative symbol of unkempt nature, evil, criminality, animalistic desires, and even cruelty, it was natural that America’s newcomers felt a strong moral duty to exterminate wolves. Wolfing, trapping, poisoning, denning, shooting has killed off thousands of wolves. In 1905, cattle ranchers in Montana won passage of a law that required the state veterinarian to infect captive wolves with the sarcoptic mange and release them into wild wolf habitat (Williams 1990).
This irrational cultural hatred of wolves has perpetuated unchecked across northern American through three centuries, forcing the Gray Wolf to the brink of extinction, like the Bison.
The ultimate effect of these predator control campaigns virtually extirpated of the wolf in the United States. In May 1943, the last wolf killed in Yellowstone fell to the rifle of a local cattleman (Loomis 1995). By 1945, the only wolves left in the Western United States were stragglers (Lopez 1978) were all but gone. Except for a small population in northern Minnesota and a few on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, wolves no longer existed in the lower forty-eight states (Lopez 1978).
Gray wolves once roamed the United States from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wolves were intensively killed in staggering numbers, eradicating them from almost all of the lower-48 by the 1930s. Today, wolves have mounted a comeback, but their recovery is far from certain. Congress, for example, recently kicked wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list, which opens the door for hundreds of wolves to be killed.
Alaska’s brutal ‘Predator Control Plan’
serving hunters at Nature’s expense – the Grey Wolf is native to Alaska.
The plan has already been in effect for three years, during which time aerial gunners have slain 564 wolves,
all of whom have faced horrors beyond the pale of traditional hunting methods.
[Source: In Defense of Animals, USA’, Read More: ^http://www.idausa.org/campaigns/wildlife/alaskan_wolf.html]
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Pfizer’s wolf persecuting advertisement incites a public hate message against wolves. It is symptomatic of a Baby Boomer attitude of domination over Nature inherited from ancestral ignorance and perpetuated in childhood by being read ‘Little Red Riding Hood‘ as children. Even in this fairy tale, the wolf was used a a metaphor for evil men. May this Grimms Brothers book be banned for children!
Pfizer management, its advertiser and the owners of The Land newspaper should withdraw the advertisement and make a public apology for denigrating wildlife and perpetuating a primitive fear against Wolves. Pfizer claims that it:
“incorporates protection of the environment, health and safety (EHS) into how we run our business. Environment, Health and Safety policy commitments set our direction and align with our company mission. Our policy is brought to life through strategic and operational decisions made daily by thousands of colleagues, guided by company values and effective management systems.”
Australia’s tradition of the ‘Wood Fire’ is ecologically destructive
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During Australia’s winter months, many in older homes habitually yearn for the warmth and glow of a traditional Wood Fire, and so utilise their open fire places and wood heaters. So habitually, upon the onset of winter people stock up on Firewood. It is a cultural yearning for the nostalgia of the Wood Fire – warm, earthy, dancing flames, flickering, spark spitting, the woodsmoke – we’ve all been there, it is tantalising and it feels right because it is natural – the ancient campfire tradition across humanity. In doing the Wood Fire ritual, we seek to rekindle our connection to Nature.
The warmth and glow of a traditional Open Fire
…but the demand is driving deforestation of Ironbark Forests
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In earlier times when a few hundred of us settled in a given forest region, few forest resources were taken and so the forests replenished and seemed to cope. The forests were naturally resilient.
But as subsequent human hoards have invaded the land, and have bred and sprawled across the countryside in the hundreds of thousands, we have deforested entire forests in the process. These forests haven’t coped with the devastation. No forest could cope.
Australia’s native forests have been hacked, logged, burned and bulldozed into agrarian pasture to the horizon. Australia’s original blanket vegetation cover has been reduced to sad islands barely able to support wildlife habitat and in many cases causing extinctions – locally, regionally and nationally. All one needs do is a Google Earth search to appreciate the devastation on the natural landscape.
A legacy of forestry
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Humanity’s sheer numbers and the encouraged consumption rate of Australians risk exacerbating the deforestation. Contemporary Australia is simply extending and perpetuating the old colonial exploitive mindset and a lifestyle reminiscent of 19th Century invading colonists.
The cultural heritage of the Wood Fire is necessarily contributing to this deforestation, particularly to Australia’s native Box-Ironbark Forests.
For Australians to continue to yearn for the glow, warmth and woodsmoke of the traditional Wood Fire now that we number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and so the aggregate consumption of timber for firewood has simply become unsustainable. Our native forests have become too small and disparate to sustain wildlife breeding.
The few shrinking native forests that our forebears and their frenzied clearing have left us, simply are disappearing. Australia’s remnant native forests continue to be destroyed by us just to serve this selfish cultural yearning for earthy nostalgia of the Wood Fire. The same applies to all woodheaters.
A classic wood fire in an old style open fireplace
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The Australian Wood Fire cultural imperative through winter has become a driver of forest extinctions. There have become too many of us wanting tonnes of the forest to burn in our open fires and wood heaters, and too few forests left.
Australia’s firewood demand is driving deforestation. There is estimated to be around 800,000 wood heaters and 700,000 open fire places in Australia (ANZECC, 2001). There combined use is unsustainable and has got to stop! We need to question this inherited and habitual Open Fire/Woodheater culture and the devastating impact it is causing to our native forests.
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“One of the hidden environmental issues affecting Australia’s woodlands, the collection of firewood, is starting to be revealed. CSIRO has prepared a report, Impact and Use of Firewood in Australia, pointing out alarming environmental problems. For example, up to 6 million tonnes of fuelwood is consumed in Australia each year – double the amount of annual exports of eucalypt woodchips!”
Firewood taken from a native forest for personal use is one thing. The scale and severity of adverse impact upon forest ecology will vary according to the amount taken and the ecological sensitivity of the place it is taken from. Few domestic takers of firewood will be qualified ecologists and so will have no or little comprehension or respect for such impacts.
A private firewood stack
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According to the CSIRO, up to 5.5 million tonnes of timber is harvested annually for Australian domestic firewood use. When industrial firewood use is included, the total amount rises 20% to between 6-7 million tonnes. This weight is roughly double the amount of eucalypt currently exported annually from Australia as woodchips. About half of all domestic firewood is collected by the consumer and 84% of domestic firewood is collected on private property. [CSIRO, 2000]
Across Australia, access to State Forests is unfettered and the collecting of firewood for personal (domestic) consumption is an uncontrolled free-for-all, little improved from the exploitative mindset of Australia’s early and more ignorant colonists.
Australian colonial ‘progress’
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Deforestation by firewood taking is perhaps not as broadscale and well known as the Conservation Movement’s exposure of state-sanctioned Industrial Logging by the likes of Australian state government departments:
‘VicForests‘ (Victoria)
‘Forests NSW‘ (New South Wales)
‘Forestry SA‘ (South Australia)
‘Forestry Tasmania‘ (Tasmania)
‘Forests and Wood‘ (Queensland)
‘Forests Products Commission‘ (West Australia)
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Or is it?
It is Australia’s Commercial Firewood Industry that contributes to the demise of Australia’s remnant native forests by its ‘death by a thousand cuts‘. Commercial Firewood entails the direct taking of wood from Australia’s native forests for commercial sale and profit. It is of a scale far greater than domestic forewood collecting, but where are the statistics kept and publicised by the Australian Government?
Just as demand for firewood drive supply, the artificial low economic cost of firewood encourages demand volume. Since firewood is sold a low cost, it competes favourably with jalternatiuve sources of fuel, such as gas and electricity, for domestic heating. Commercial firewood suppliers also deliberately appeal to the Wood Fire cultural image to encourage their firewood sales. Suppliers and consusmers thus feed off each other at low cost and high volumes, and so more native forests lose out.
A commercial firewood stack
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The low or no cost availability of timber from State Forests Native timber means that the industry operates on an industrial scale taking vast quantities of timber, particularly from the preferred hardwood Box-Ironbark Forests and the like. The Commerical Firewood Industry is encouraged by the Australian Government and by all state governments, which ignore the practice as if Australia’s natuve forests are unlimited, as if it had no adverse ecological impact upon the forest ecologies, as if it didn’t matter, as if there were no tomorrow.
Commercial Firewood Production
Norwegian Hakki-Pilke industrial machinery enables an industrial scale operation
[Source: Mascus Australia, ^http://www.mascus.com.au/]
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Across Australia, each state government issues cheap permits for collecting firewood from State Forests.
This reflects:
A cultural disregard for the values of Australia’s disappearing forest ecologies up to Prime Ministerial and Cabinet level
The inadequacies of State laws to protect forest ecology
An antiquainted colonist mindset persisting throughout the dominating Liberal and Labor parties.
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The ecological impacts and the plethora of ecological advice and warnings about the destructive impacts of logging on forest ecology are being ignored. Australia’s Commercial Firewood Industry fuels demand for cheap firewood and in the process exacerbates Australia’s deforestation.
Australia’s Firewood Industry is unsustainable and has got to be nationally controlled. We need to challenge this exploitative industry and correct ignorant government policies. We need to find alternatives to the Wood Fire to stem the devastation of Australia’s remaining native forests and to help prevent more wildlife extinctions.
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‘Forest Eco-theft’ involves the immoral taking of timber from a native forest, especially in large industrial quantities, for commercial gain and incurring no or little economic cost to the taker. The intended or actual use of the timber is irrelevent, but may include logs, firewood, craft timber, or woodchips. The greater the timber volume taken, the greater impact upon a forest and so the more serious the Eco-theft.
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‘Eco-theft’ is only different to criminal theft because of the colonist exploitative mindset of current governments rejecting native forest having ecological value worthy of protection under the Crimes Act.
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An industrial scale Hakki-Pilke firewood processor from Norway
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Forest Eco-theft in an environment of dwindling forest habitat has become a key threatening process. At the current rate of Forest Eco-theft, Australia’s native forests fueling our pleasure for earthy glows and hearth warmth, will be gone.
Firewood Logging simply destroys forest habitat and contributes to the demise and local extinctions of threatened and endangered wildlife. Australia’s flora and fauna deaths and ultimate extinctions has become infamy – Australia currently has the worst record of mammalian extinctions on the planet, and the Firewood culture is contributing to it.
Many consumers of firewood either actively couldn’t care, or else passively turn an insular blind eye to the adverse ecological impacts of firewood harvesting. Our Australian Government ignores the firewood deforestation problem, avoiding it for party political convenience – immorally, irresponsibly and unrepresentingly.
Just as Poaching Wildlife is immoral, so too is Forest Eco-theft. Both these exploitative practices hark to colonial times and need to be banned.
Firewood Logging of State Forest near Taralga NSW in 2006.
(along the Goulbourn-Oberon Road, just west of the Blue Mountains)
“This is in the habitat of Diuris aequalis. Had a fair result after two visits to this site and three submissions to local Council. Department of Environment and Conservation have imposed rigid conditions on this business.”
[Source: ‘Habitat – Protection or Destruction‘, 2006, by Alan W Stephenson, Conservation Director, Australian Orchid Council Inc.
^http://www.orchidsaustralia.com/article_%20conservation_no3.htm]
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Why choose ‘Ironbark Firewood’ ?
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Why choose Ironbark Firewood ? Why not choose an alternative sources of fuel for home heating? Never thought to question the legitimacy of your fuel?
Here’s the justification by one firewood supplier as to why one should choose Ironbark Firewood:
‘Long Burning. Harder to start but will burn 6 – 8 hours. These timbers are the slowest growing and the hardest of all hardwoods.’
‘Very little ash. Clean out fire only once per season approximately.’
‘Strong Burning. Cannot be put out even if the vent closed, unless water is used.’
A classic Ironbark ‘Open Fire’
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The most common type of firewood commerically sold and promoted in the eastern Australian states is Ironbark Firewood. This is typically sourced from Box-Ironbark Forests (native grassy woodlands).
According to the Firewood Association of Australia (FAA), Ironbark and Box are the preferred firewood in Queensland, while in Victoria, southern NSW and South Australia, River Red Gum is preferred. Jarrah and Wandoo hardwood timbers are preferred in Western Australia, while in Tasmania, Brown Peppermint is considered the best firewood.
Sydney’s Firewood has been linked to ongoing Queensland land clearing, and in Queensland successive backward state governments have an ignoble reputation for land clearing like there’s no tomorrow.
Landclearing in Queensland has become the major supplier of Sydney’s quality firewood. Most of Sydney’s big firewood companies now rely on the Sunshine State for a significant proportion of ironbark and box logs – highly sought-after timbers because of their density. The National Parks Association says firewood from endangered Queensland woodlands is being used in homes across New South Wales.
Back in 2001, the National Parks Association of NSW called on the NSW Government to limit the State’s use of firewood following revelations that most of the wood sold by Sydney’s big firewood companies comes from clearing of Queenslands threatened Ironbark and Box woodlands.
Ironbark Woodland of Central Queensland
[Australia Natural Resource Atlas]
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At the time, Mr Charlie Spiteri, the owner of Betta Burn Firewood, one of the biggest suppliers in Sydney, refused to reveal how much firewood he supplies each year but estimates that the Sydney region, including Katoomba, consumes about 100,000 tonnes.
Commercial Firewood stockpile
(click photo to enlarge)
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Spiteri said about a third of his supply was sourced from Queensland, where the wood is worth between $40 and $50 a cubic metre. By the time the freight reaches Sydney, it is worth up to $125 and is being snapped up. “People are choosing ironbark and box and we have to go where the timber is,” Mr Spiteri said.
Other major sources of hardwoods for Betta Burn include the Pilliga State Forest in north-west NSW and private properties in the Nyngan area.
Executive officer at the National Parks Association (NSW), Mr Andrew Cox, said:
“Firewood collecting is the second largest threat to Australia’s temperate woodlands after land clearing. Now its being linked to landclearing!” “We know little about the impacts of firewood collecting and governments have been slow to take an interest. Most firewood consumers are unaware of where their wood comes from or the huge impact it has on threatened animals, birds and reptiles.”
“The firewood industry is large, but mostly unknown”, said Andrew Cox, NPA Executive Officer. “About 1,500,000 tonnes of firewood are used by New South Wales each year, exceeding the State’s yearly combined production of sawlogs and woodchips.”
“Firewood collecting targets slow-growing ecosystems and some of their most important components. Eucalypt species such as ironbark, box and red gum are the most favoured firewood sources.”
“We need to move away from the need to ‘clean-up’ a forest or woodland and instead look at dead wood as an important ecological component – just as important as the living trees.”
“Its because we’re not properly managing the woodlands that a wave of bird extinctions is underway in central NSW. More than 20 woodland dependent birds are declining from their former range and may become extinct in NSW. “It’s not ecologically sound, it’s not sustainable and there are serious impacts on birds, on animals that depend on the hollows.”
But no-one knows for sure how much timber salvaged from the bulldozed woodlands of Queensland is making its way south of the border in convoys of semi-trailers. Firewood collection operates in a legal vacuum – especially on private land – and virtually no figures are kept for where wood is sourced or how it is collected.
[Source: ‘Sydney’s Firewood Linked to Queensland Land Clearing‘, by Andrew Cox, Executive Officer, National Parks Association of NSW, 20010428, ^http://dazed.org/npa/press/20010428firewood.htm]
A typical commercial firewood truck – 2 tonne?
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Since then, over a decade ago, what has changed? Anything? Nothing? Has the problem gotten worse?
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83% of the original Box-Ironbark Forests have gone
In Victoria, few forest and woodland ecosystems are as poorly represented in parks and reserves as the distinctive Box-Ironbark ecosystems of northern Victoria.
Since European settlement these forests and woodlands have been extensively cleared and fragmented for agriculture, urban development and gold mining, and cut for a variety of wood products. They once covered three million hectares of northern Victoria, but 83% of the original Box-Ironbark vegetation has now been cleared.
Original distribution of grassy woodlands across New South Wales
(Dominated by Box-Ironbark Forests)
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Not only have the forests and woodlands been mostly cleared, but what is left is highly modified from its original structure and is also very fragmented. These remaining forests and woodlands are mostly on public land and these areas are ecologically important for a rich diversity of flora and fauna, many of which are rare or threatened.
Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands are highly accessible and the visitor is rewarded by a vibrant array of bird species, carpets of wildflowers in Spring, the rich aroma of eucalypt nectar, and many sites of historical and cultural interest. Despite their apparent uniformity, these forests actually have great diversity with around 1 500 species of higher plants and over 250 vertebrate species recorded in the region; many are largely restricted to Box-Ironbark forests and woodlands.
Some 297 Box-Ironbark plant species and 53 animal species are now classified as extinct, threatened or near-threatened. In addition, at least ten plant and animal species are known to have disappeared from the study area since the 1840s, and numerous others have become locally extinct. It is also clear and of great concern that many species, particularly birds, are known to be still declining.
Accordingly, a key feature of Box-Ironbark nature conservation is the promotion of ‘recovery’ for many species, rather than simply maintaining the status quo. Many Australian animals are dependent upon large, old eucalypt trees which contain the hollows required for shelter and breeding. At least six of the threatened Box-Ironbark fauna species are strongly dependent upon these trees. The massive loss of large old trees over the last 150 years is strongly implicated in the decline of these species and perhaps many others. It is therefore recommended that as well as protecting existing large old trees, additional measures be taken to ensure that there will, over time, be more large old trees in the forests.
Ironbark is a preferred firewood in eastern Australia because it burns longer and hotter, so Australia’s native Ironbark forests continue to be logged for firewood.
Ironbark firewood stack, commercially cut and split ready for domestic delivery
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The Australian hardwood timber industry now mainly relies upon plantation timbers and sustainable forestry management practices. Australian Ironbark Flooring retails at a premium price at typically over $80/m2 at 19mm thick. If that square meter of flooring was stacked one metre high to achieve a cubic metre, the calculated retail price for a cubic metre would be (1000m/19mm = 50 layers of flooring roughly, making the retail price for a cubic metre of Ironbark flooring around $80 x 50 = $5600/m3!
Expensive Ironbark Flooring
Sourced from sustainable plantation timber, unaffordable to the Commercial Firewood Industry,
so firewood suppliers take the Ironbark out of State Forests instead.
[Source: Northern Rivers Timber, ^http://www.northernriverstimber.com.au/gallery.php]
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But commercial suppliers of firewood do not own plantation timber, nor do they buy their firewood from plantation timber growers. They certainly do not pay $5,600/m3 for firewood.
Commercial firewood is generally sold at considerable profit at under $160/m3, reducing in price according to volume purchased. Why would an commercial grower of plantation Ironbark hardwood sell the timber for firewood at $160/m3, when as flooring the typical market price is a factor of some 35 times greater at $5600/m3?
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Commercial Firewood taken from native forests means that the $160 selling price is nearly all profit!
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Australia’s commercial firewood instead is simply taken from Australia’s native hardwood forests. It is simply taken from State Forests at no cost to the commercial operator, except for a pultry token permit fee. That is why it is sold so cheaply.
This is why firewood remains a cheap affordable source for domestic household heating. But the cost is artifically economic and excludes the ecological cost.
How is this not Forest Eco-Theft? If the suppliers of Ironbark Firewood had to pay hardwood plantation owners a fair wholesale price for firewood, at such a high price their business model would be unviable. Firewood suppliers only exist because their business model relies upon firewood theft from dwindling State Forests, which continues to go unpoliced and ignored by the Australian Government.
Industrial Firewood Industry
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Where do YOU get your FIREWOOD from?
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Where do you get your firewood from?
Is it legal or eco-stolen?
Is it accredited?
What is Australia’s Firewood Industry doing to protect Australia’s long exploited and dwindling Ironbark Forests from firewood theft by firewood suppliers?
What is the Australian Government doing to prevent firewood theft from State Forests?
What is the Australian Government doing to monitor and control Australia’s firewood industry?
Who in the Australian Government monitors the integrity and ecological protection of State Forests across New South Wales and indeed across Australia?
Where is the ongoing review and analysis into the ecological health of Box-Ironbark Forests (Grassy Woodlands) across New South Wales and Victoria?
Why are the statistics on firewood theft from State Forests not collected and publicised?
Who polices and penalises deforestation of State Forests?
How many people are caught and fined/gaoled for deforestation of State Forests
Isn’t it illegal to steal firewood from State Forests – living trees or deadwood?
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At the time of publication of this article, the New South Wales Government’s official website on Environment and specifically on Threatened Species reads:
“There has been a serious system failure on the threatened species website (www.threatenedspecies.nsw.gov.au) and it is no longer available”
Pile of Ironbark Firewood cut and split ready for domestic delivery
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In the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the local newspaper advertises numerous suppliers of firewood, particularly at the onset of winter, and particularly promoting Ironbark Firewood as the premium product as follows:
Firewood suppliers advertising in the Blue Mountains Gazette, 20120516
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But from where do these firewood suppliers source their firewood?
Not one of the above advertisements provides any proud statement about sourcing their wood ecologically responsibly, nor about being ecologically accredited. The default presumption thus is that none of these suppliers is environmentally responsible, nor accredited. So don’t buy from any of them!
Is the advertised firewood sourced illegally from Australia’s disappearing Box-Ironbark Forests, and so exacerbating the deforestation problem? How do we know it isn’t?
How simple is it for any common thief to buy a chainsaw, drive out to a patch of State Forest in a ute or in a truck or with a trailer in tow, then chainsaw several trees in a Box-Ironbark Forest, paying nothing for them, then flog the wood for personal profit? Too easy! Anyone can buy a chainsaw from a local garden tool supplier, even a kid. There are no chainsaw laws in Australia. It is treated like buying secateurs. Bunnings sells cheap chainsaws brand-new for just $200!
So armed with a trailer and chainsaw, a common thief has a lucrative business, one ignored by the Australian Government. With firewood retailing from $160/cubic metre, it is a nice little earner. This exploitative immoral trade in Ironbark Forest ecology is negligently condoned by the Australian Government and state governments.
A native tree cut for firewood (Blackheath Fire Brigade, Rural Fire Service, Blue Mountains, November 2011)
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‘Forest Eco-theft’ wiping out Ironbark Habitat
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Logs have life inside
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‘Collecting firewood is one of humankind’s oldest activities. Australians enjoy the beauty and warmth of a wood fire, and in many regional areas wood fires are the only practical source of heating.
Dead trees, often with hollows, make popular firewood as they are seasoned and burn well. But firewood collection comes at a cost to the environment, the consequences of which may not be entirely understood for years. Many firewood users are unaware of the ecological price of collecting dead trees and fallen logs. Often they mistakenly think they are just keeping the forest or farm tidy.
Firewood harvesting has an effect on our native woodlands, and a variety of threatened species. Dead standing and fallen timber provides crucial habitat for numerous species of animals and birds. It is now recognised that the removal of this wood for firewood is contributing to a significant loss of wildlife, particularly in the woodlands of south-eastern Australia. It is not just native animals that benefit from old wood left lying on the ground. This debris is valuable shelter for stock too. How many times have you found a newborn calf or lamb against an old log safe from the weather?
Habitat Tree of critical value to wildlife…destroyed by Forestry NSW
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Not only does standing and fallen dead wood provide important habitat for animals and birds, it also plays an essential role in maintaining forest and woodland nutrient cycles. Scientists from the CSIRO believe that dead wood is at least as important as living trees, fallen leaves and soil for the maintenance oif ecological processes sustaining biodiversity.’
[Source: ‘Are you burning their homes to warm yours?‘, a brochure questioning the dependency on firewood), by The National Heritage Trust. The Natural Heritage Trust (the Trust) was set up by the Australian Government under the Natural Heritage Trust Act 1997 to help restore and conserve Australia’s environment and natural resources. The Trust had three overarching objectives: (1) Biodiversity Conservation, (2) Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, and (3) Community Capacity Building and Institutional Change. The Natural Heritage Trust ceased on 30 June 2008. It has been replaced by Caring for our Country, but taking supplanting a natural heritage conservation philosophy with a more anthropocentric utilitarian ‘resource management’ philosopy, ^http://www.nrm.gov.au/]
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Cleaning up some messy dead timber – through whose eyes? Nature is naturally ‘messy’
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The Regent Honeyeater has become a ‘flagship species’ for conservation issues in the box-ironbark forest region of Victoria and New South Wales.
Regent Honeyeater (Anthochaera-phrygia)
Nationally listed as ‘Endangered‘.
Listed as endangered in Queensland and New South Wales, while in Victoria it is listed as threatened.
[Source: ^http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Anthochaera-phrygia]
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Australia’s native Regent Honeyeater, was formerly more widely distributed in south-eastern mainland Australia from Rockhampton, Queensland to Adelaide, South Australia, but is now confined to Victoria and New South Wales, and is strongly associated with the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range. Its natural habitat is eucalypt forests and woodlands, including Box-Ironbark Forests.
The Regent Honeyeater has been badly affected by land-clearing, with the clearance of the most fertile stands of nectar-producing trees and the poor health of many remnants, as well as competition for nectar from other honeyeaters, being the major problems. Birds Australia is helping to conserve Regent Honeyeaters as part of its Woodland Birds for Biodiversity project.
‘This report contains the ECC’s recommendations for public land use in the Box-Ironbark area of northern Victoria, extending from Stawell to Wodonga. The recommendations incorporate those for parts of the LCC’s North Central, Murray Valley and adjoining areas.’ (>Read Report, PDF 6.6MB – large file may be slow to load)
An emaciated Tiger in a Vietnamese farm cage awaits slaughter for TCM Tiger Parts
A mascot of an evil, barbaric and low-life society
A TCM practitioner plying her trade in Yin/Yang Bollocks
Cache of wildlife parts in Vietnam – the entrails of a barbaric cult
Tusks of Elephants savagedly butchered for TCM, their tusks chainsawed off while still alive.
This is a TCM stockpile of tusks intercepted in a shipping container in Malaysia
Skulls of Cambodians savagedly butchered by the Khmer Rouge
This is a stockpile of human skulls in the Tuolsleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh
Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)
Members of the species once inhabited rainforests, swamps and cloud forests in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China.
In historical times they lived in southwest China, particularly in Sichuan.
But with TCM barbarism they have become persecuted and are now critically endangered,
with only six substantial populations in the wild: four on Sumatra, one on Borneo, and one in the Malay Peninsula.
(Photo: Bill Konstant/International Rhino Foundation)
For Asians seeking aphrodisiacs?
Viagra is proven to work, but TCM is bollocks
Bile being extracted from a bear’s gall bladder – while it is conscious
So when you visit your Ying Yang Traditional Chinese Medicine Quack,
remember this tiger suffered for your healing cult.
Tiger Wine – extracted from Tigers
It may as well be the cerebral fluid of Cambodians butchered at the hand of the Khmer Rouge
Human Cerebrospinal fluid
Not as marketable in test tubes, but then TCM Cultists haven’t got around to bottling and branding this yet
Abject Fear for Reason
Pangolines poached for TCM
Bob Parsons – Elephant Killer
Robert Borsak – elephant trophyist
New South Wales Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak with an elephant shot on safari in Zimbabwe, June 2008.
[Source: ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-13/nsw-mp-robert-borsak-with-an-elephant-shot-on/2619226]
The Clouded Leopard (Neofelis nebulosa)
Is a felid found from the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China, and has been classified as vulnerable in 2008 by IUCN.
Poached for barbaric TCM.
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Doomed: One of the tigers at Xiongsen animal park being turned into wine
Hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages by the Chinese TCM Cultists
So Visit China – see its wildlife, taste its wildlife, souvenir its wildlife!
Not sure what TCM says how Panda Parts heal you or give you a hard on?
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The Tiger – an animal far more intelligent that any TCM dimwit
The classic image of the ‘Camp Fire’
