"The Greatness Of A Nation And Its Moral Progress Can Be Judged By The Way Its Animals Are Treated" - Mahatma Gandhi
I am a wildlife advocate and I am 100% dedicated to raising awareness about wildlife crime and its effect on the environment. Whether it be doing everything to stop poaching, calling for animal free circuses or ending the cruel treatment and exploitation of animals I will do everything I can to highlight it.
I am the proud foster parent of orphan Elephants Lentili at TheDavid Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and Kavala at Elephantopia. I am a proud trustee of the Lion conservation charity LionAid.
When you have to spend a long time in a hospital bed it can
be hard not seeing much of your friends – especially the four-legged kind!
But not anymore – Staff at the Trinity Holistic Centre at
The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough have pulled out all the
stops to open up their own pet shed.
The purpose-built facility in the holistic centre garden now
provides an opportunity for families to bring in small animals such as dogs,
cats and rabbits so that patients can be reunited with their much-loved pets –
providing they are well enough to leave the ward.
Patients will be accompanied by a staff member or therapeutic
care volunteer from South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust throughout their
pet therapy session and strict hand washing rules will be in place to comply
with infection control rules.
The pre-arranged visits can be for up to an hour, but for
safety reasons only one pet can be on site at any time and they must be kept
under control by a family member.
Lauren Farrow, Macmillan information and support centre’s business manager said: “We wanted to use our garden to help patients who are missing their pets to spend some precious time with them.
“Pets are such an important part of our lives and can really affect our sense of wellbeing so this project fits really well with the holistic work that we do.
“Guidance from the Royal College of Nursing champions the importance of this kind of therapy so we were keen to make it a realistic option for our patients. After all, patients who spend long periods of time in hospital can actually have a quicker recovery if they have access to their pets.”
Darren, 50, of Appleton Wiske, has six dogs and is currently
in hospital for up to six months after breaking his leg in two places in a sky
He said: “I think it’s a fantastic idea. Dogs offer calmness
and lift the mood and this gives you the chance to bring in your own dogs which
is much more special.”
From a practical point of view, it is only by using violence that the trainers achieve it. Phajaan lasts between 4 and 6 days and is carried out on young Elephants. The animals are separated from their mothers and locked in narrow cages where they are chained. Without being able to struggle or even move a limb, they are then repeatedly hit in strategic places, the most sensitive.
In addition to being beaten, Elephants are kept awake, deprived of food and water under the eyes of trainers (“mahout”) who recite prayers that can be translated as “Elephant, if you stop fighting, we do not you’ll hurt more, “says a documentary. The torture does not stop until after several days, when the trainers believe that the spirit of the Elephant is broken, that his behaviour has changed.
Out of his cage, the animal appears submissive, impressed by the fear of the man who subjected him to this torture. Then begins a real training that will consist in teaching the Elephant all the necessary commands or gestures intended to amuse the tourists. Once the specimen is formed, it can be used as an attraction for most of its life.
50% of Elephants die during the ritual
It is estimated that half of the Elephants would not survive phajaan. Others would become aggressive: about 100 mahouts are killed each year by their animals. Still others would go insane or have trouble with their experience, rendering them unusable for attractions. Most would then be killed.
The surviving Elephants are used to wander the tourists, to beg or for work. In order for them to remain submissive, they are given a few booster shots by hitting them or pressing the sensitive spots again. In tourism, an Elephant can spend the day carrying people without a minute to rest, eat or drink. The rest of the time, most animals are tied up so that they are not dangerous.
A life that would often lead to the appearance of disorders including neurological. “If you ever have a chance to spot domestic Elephants, watch them,” Seth and Lise explain. “Chance or not, all the Elephants we’ve seen had signs of recent abuse, scars, obvious signs of poor health, some are more damaged than others, and it’s extremely rare to see one of these well-treated animals. “.
“It is largely because of tourists that this business works, so it is up to tourists to make the right decisions. The future and especially the well-being of thousands of Elephants is at stake,” they conclude in their blog.
But he was the herd’s last chance of survival – notorious escape artists, they would all be killed if Lawrence wouldn’t take them. He agreed, but before arrangements for the move could be completed the animals broke out again and the matriarch and her baby were shot. The remaining Elephants were traumatised and very angry. As soon as they arrived at Thula Thula they started planning their escape.
“They were a difficult bunch, no question about it,” he recalled. “Delinquents every one. But I could see a lot of good in them too. They’d had a tough time and were all scared, and yet they were looking after one another, trying to protect one another.”
Lawrence decided to treat the Elephants as errant children, working to persuade them, through words and gestures, that they should not behave badly and that they could trust him. He concentrated his attention on Nana, the matriarch of the herd: “I’d go down to the fence and I’d plead with Nana not to break it down,” he said. “I knew she didn’t understand English, but I hoped she’d understand by the tone of my voice and my body language what I was saying. And one morning, instead of trying to break the fence down, she just stood there. Then she put her trunk through the fence towards me. I knew she wanted to touch me. That was a turning point.” Soon they were allowed out into the reserve.
As Lawrence battled to create a bond with the Elephants and save them from execution, he came to realise that they had a lot to teach him about love, loyalty and freedom. Set against the background of life on the reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, he wrote The Elephant Whisperer, a book that appealed to animal lovers worldwide.
When Lawrence died at the age of 61 in 2012, two herds of wild South African Elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author, the conservationist who saved their lives. The formerly violent, rogue Elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.” For two days the herds loitered at Lawrence’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu — to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died? Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized Elephants Lawrence had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Babylon Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer. There are two Elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death. “They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,” Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush. “Elephants have long been known to mourn their dead. In India, baby Elephants often are raised with a boy who will be their lifelong “mahout.” The pair develop legendary bonds and it is not uncommon for one to waste away without a will to live after the death of the other.
The original herd of 7 Elephants that Lawrence Anthony rescued in 1999 has now increased to 30 Elephants meaning the maximum sustainable capacity of Thula Thula has been reached!
How Can The Long-Term Future Of The Elephant Whispered Herd Be Secured?
Thanks to the local community, Thula Thula has the opportunity to add a further 3500 hectares of land to increase their habitat. This solution requires 35 km of electric fencing as well as roads, increased security, guard training, security equipment and vehicles, conservation, land management and the list just go on, to keep the wildlife safe. Community projects such as this, not only support the wildlife but also improve local employment and education.
Dolphinariums Don’t Just Break Dolphins, They Break People Too!
“Lies, deceit, corruption – to say nothing of cruelty. All facets of the lucrative captive cetacean industry. And I should know, because I was once a big part of it.
So, who am I?
I have several pseudonyms, my most popular being ‘Capello’, the most colourful being ‘The Psychic Trainer’. But there is another handle – one I’d rather remain unwritten, as my whistle-blowing return was never intended as self-promotion. Either way, I am the trainer featured in The Perfect Pair Dolphin Trilogy exposé, three books written under the fiction banner to avoid legal problems. A story now described by one discerning reviewer as ‘… fact stranger and more brutal than fiction!’ Yet, incredibly, all events chronicled are true, facts authenticated by original dolphin logbooks, long since thought destroyed. (A common Company practice on the death of a show dolphin.)
As you can imagine, my emergence with these logs has severely rattled the conglomerate and animal celebs involved in the story, resulting in a national UK media blackout. A cover-up that appears to have infiltrated the USA, after this award-winning exposé was controversially pulled from an over-subscribed summer reading programme by an unnamed US official. Desperate actions that beg the question, ‘Why are so many organisations, people and – now it would appear – governments so afraid of my story? Why are they so anxious to shut me up?’ Questions that can only be answered by reading the exposé itself.
As for me, my involvement with the aqua circus began at the tender age of 17, when I landed what I believed to be my dream job – a naivety that saw me whisked away from family and friends, and deposited in the harsh confines of the UK dolphin training pens; a facility breaking raw dolphins for the commercial dolphinaria.
Always held in high esteem, trainers graduating from this establishment were known for being ‘hard-nosed’. Not surprising considering the daily horrors they inevitably witnessed – botched transports that left countless dolphins injured and even maimed. I personally witnessed air burns, a blinding and much, much worse, devastating for the dolphins that survived, because – as my pen colleagues always reminded me – many Atlanteans didn’t.
Working the pens was physically and mentally gruelling. Early training was always conducted lying belly down on wet platforms, so we could interact with our dolphin captives eye to eye. Fifteen-hour days were commonplace. Depriving the dolphins of sleep was an important method used to secure the quickfire results that management demanded.
It was here that I witnessed my first suicide dolphin – a phenomenon that the captive industry vehemently denies. It was also here where I learned to hand-catch in preparation for transports, veterinary treatments or force-feeds – the latter, horribly distressing.
The force-feeds consisted of wrapping disinfected towel gags around the upper and lower jaws of the manually pinned-down dolphins, followed by physically pushing lubricated herring down into their throats to activate their swallowing mechanism. This nightmare was normally performed five fish at a time, punctuated by brief rest periods. Even so, this was not always successful, as the dolphins often vomited back their forced feed.
Much worse than the vomiting, however, was the unseen damage inflicted on the dolphins’ psyches, because once they’d undergone this torturous procedure, they were left vulnerable to what many pen trainers refer to as the ‘dolphin mind-set’, a mental condition that, once activated, proves difficult to reverse … suicide by self-starvation.
In fact, my only fond memory of the pens was Duchess and Herb’e (Flippa), my beloved Perfect Pair, for it was their brilliance that allowed the three of us to escape that hellhole and head to our first purpose-built dolphinarium.
The rest, as they say, is history. Over the next three years, my two magnificent show dolphins took the aqua circus by storm, achieving the much-revered shadow ballet. Their story has been lovingly chronicled by the Holroyds in The Perfect Pair Dolphin Trilogy book series – a warts-and-all exposé that I pray will help bring down this horrendous industry.
As for me, once I’d made my decision to walk away from the aqua circus, I was never tempted to return, despite a lucrative offer to train Europe’s then only captive orca. My reason? I viewed my achievements not with pride, but with shame. Nevertheless, despite the attempted cover-up, my experiences are now a documented part of UK dolphinarium history – a tool to shine a light into the sinister and murky world of captive cetaceans.
Sudan, the world’s last male Northern White Rhino has fallen gravely ill, driving the subspecies one step closer towards extinction.
The 45-year-old rhino is known, is suffering from two infections on his right back leg. He lives at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which announced on Twitter late last month that Sudan’s “health has begun deteriorating, and his future is not looking bright.
The Rhino’s troubles began late last year, when Sudan developed an age-related infection on his back leg. He was treated and seemed to be recovering well, but a secondary, deeper infection was recently discovered behind the original one.
“This has been treated, but worryingly, the infection is taking longer to recover, despite the best efforts of his team of vets who are giving him 24-hour care,” Ol Pejeta wrote on Twitter. “We are very concerned about him—he’s extremely old for a rhino and we do not want him to suffer unnecessarily.”
Elodie A. Sampere, a spokesperson for the conservancy, tells Faith Karimi of CNN that Sudan is still feeding and walking about, “albeit very little.”
“Euthanasia will be explored if we feel he is suffering too much and won’t recover,” Sampere says.
Sudan is one of the world’s last three Northern White Rhinos, and the only male. Two females—Najin and her daughter Fatu—also live at Ol Pejeta. Recent efforts to breed the rhinos have not been successful; Sudan has a low sperm count, Najin’s knees are too weak to endure breeding attempts and Fatu is infertile. Last year, Sudan was given a Tinder profile as part of a campaign to raise funds to develop reproductive technology for the rhinos.
Northern White Rhinos have already been classified as extinct, since none exist in the wild, according to Ann M. Simmons of the Los Angeles Times. And all species of rhino are facing grave threats. While millions of the animals once roamed across Africa and Asia, only 30,000 now survive in the wild, according to Save the Rhino. Poachers, who illegally hunt Rhinos for their horns, are the main threat to the animals’ survival. At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Sudan is constantly flanked by armed guards.
Scientists are exploring various options for reintroducing the northern white rhino subspecies, among them in-vitro fertilization. Barbara Durrant, director of reproductive sciences at San Diego Zoo Global, tells Simmons that other possibilities include using stem cell technology to create a northern white rhino embryo (which could then be implanted in a surrogate), creating a hybrid between Northern and Southern White Rhinos, or even cloning the animal.
But, Durrant notes, scientist “have lot of work to do to develop those technologies.” More urgent is the need to stamp out the demand for Rhino horn and bring an end to the poaching of these magnificent creatures.