Un testimonial animalista promuove la marcia per il clima e contro gli allevamenti intensivi del 15 giugno 2019
Ylenia, attivista vegana, presenta la marcia per il clima e contro gli allevamenti intensivi, organizzata da Animal Amnesty e Fridays For Future Roma. L'evento si terrà il 15 giugno alle ore 15, partendo da Piazza della Repubblica e arrivando a Piazzale Loreto.
Movimento vegano e Fridays For Future Roma presentano la marcia per il clima del 15 giugno 2019 a Roma
Il 5 giugno 2019 si è svolto un flash mob in via del Corso con Animal Amnesty e Fridays For Future Roma per presentare la manifestazione che si svolgerà il 15 giugno alle ore 15 in Piazza della Repubblica a Roma. L'obiettivo è quello di portare il messaggio che bisogna fermare o ridurre al massimo l'uso di carne in quanto le zootecnie intensive apportano un danno enorme al clima causando gravi problemi.
'Not nice to meat you' series: 'Sheep' The purpose of 'Not nice to meat you' series is to spread consciousness about animals which are usually seen just as food. Fun and interesting facts about sheeps are framed in the red dotted lines of meat cuts, but my little friend kiwi already knows them all. #notnicetomeatyou #sheep #pink #animalfunfacts #knowyourfood #kiwi #handmade #illustration #colours #vegan #govegan #compassion #animalamnesty #stopanimalcruelty #voiceforvoiceless
Killing wildlife: Is this really the best we can come up with?
Speech made at the Shark Rally Event in Bunbury Feb. 1st, 2014.
By Dr Ben Fitzpatrick, Director, Oceanwise Expeditions.
As a PhD in Marine Science, with honours in Applied Fisheries Science and as a Zoologist and Environmental Scientist specialized in measuring the impact of humans on marine ecosystems, we need targeted, humane and focused solutions not actions that are potentially disastrous for endangered animals and ecosystems. Having swam with and observed thousands of sharks during three decades as a commercial diver, skipper, surfer and swimmer there have been just a handful of occasions where there was legitimate safety concerns for me. During all this time around the water I have seen just two great white sharks: one that died after launching itself into a tinny in Bunbury in 1987, and a live one up North in 2013.
For the most part the government has been extremely progressive in response to the shark attack fatalities that have occurred in Western Australia. In addition to the worlds most advanced tagging and tracking program, long overdue research is underway on shark sensory systems for the development of shark detection, interference and repellent technologies [3, 4]. I am largely ambivalent to the deployment of drum-lines following an attack in an effort to catch the animal. In this case these lines would be supervised and animals removed from the hooks relatively quickly. The shark would likely be long gone and it is unlikely the correct animal would be caught. For legal and personal reasons this measure could be justifiable. The latest policy of the permanent deployment of drum lines is not. Lets keep the magnitude of this threat in perspective [5]. The tragedy of lost lives should be used to catalyse the progressive development of worlds best practice in wildlife policy, research, tourism and management and the deployment of drum lines to pre-emptively kill animals is not worlds best practice in any of these disciplines. Its a practice from a time when we knew a lot less about our natural environment.
Give the ocean a break!
The combined impacts of global climate change, destructive fisheries, habitat destruction, coastal development, plastic pollution and more continue to wreak havoc on our oceans [6-11]. Globally 10 of the 13 major fisheries in the world have collapsed, 90% of our large marine fish biomass has disappeared and of the 10% left, over 100 million individual sharks and rays are killed annually [1, 7, 12]. A quarter of these species are threatened with extinction. Sharks are some of the most fascinating, ancient, long-lived and least understood creatures on this planet and we are systematically hunting them to extinction [13]. Destructive hunting has driven great white sharks to the brink of extinction and they, along with many other species are listed on international, national and state legislation to protect us from wiping these animals off the face of this planet [14]. We are privileged in WA that we can still witness these incredible animals in the wild. There are so many more urgent environmental issues of massively real consequence for humanity that need attention now.
These large apex predators are the habitat architects and ecosystem engineers of our oceans. If we loose these animals we run the risk of marine ecosystem collapse. Long term study of the impact the loss of predators have on marine ecosystems are difficult to achieve [15-17]. In many instances predators like great whites have been dramatically impacted well before any detailed scientific understanding of associated ecosystems has been reached . Nonetheless there are some examples where the loss of sharks, predatory reef fish, otters, wolves, and grizzly bears have shown us how entire ecosystems respond to the loss of predators. For instance, the removal of great sharks resulted in the increase of their ray, skate and small shark prey to such an extent that they ate all the scallops in the area which led to the collapse of a century-long scallop fishery [18]. In habitats where snapper are depleted, one of their main prey, sea urchins, explode in numbers and destroy the macro-algae habitats the rest of the ecosystem depends upon for food and shelter [19]. Similarly, the loss of otters who would otherwise be eating urchins and other invertebrates, meant their prey too are eating their way through our giant kelp forests from the seafloor, destroying these ecosystems at such an alarming rate there may soon be none left [20]. In examples from the land, where grizzly bears would normally be catching salmon from streams and eating their carcasses in the nearby woods, this no longer occurs and the forests are being deprived of vital nutrients [21]. Without wolves in Yellowstone NP, coyote numbers run rampant, eating all the rodents and small prey and depriving other small predators like hawks of food. And without these wolves eating elk, the elk ran rampant, spreading disease, eating all the vegetation and tree seedlings, meaning beavers have no trees to build dams, which means riverine landscapes and the biodiversity they support are fundamentally altered and degraded [22]. Without apex predators like great whites exerting their influence on ecosystems, the productivity and diversity in our coastal environments are jeopardized.
White sharks are data deficient, endangered and vulnerable to extinction.
Indiscriminately killing long lived, slow growing animals that only produce few young and number in the mere thousands in WA is not a good idea [23]. For such a small population every death matters [24]. We have very little data on white shark population status and what information we do have does not suggest a dramatic increase in their population [25]. We know very little about their most basic biology, their senses, where they breed, their habits and movements. Even if a great white is caught it will be dumped at sea and not used to advance science. Their spatial movement and feeding behaviour is equally hard to define, where one individual might migrate vast distances from Albany to Ningaloo to South Africa and back in search of food, another may happily feed and remain close to the one spot for years [26]. Indeed despite there being large numbers of white sharks in close proximity to swimmers at the east coast white shark nursery there has never been a single attack [27]. Where an abundance of individuals offer no threat to humans, on very rare and statistically random occasions, individual sharks have. We cannot generalize white shark behaviour. It is simply impossible to predict where an attack might occur and most fatalities have occurred at sites far from where the Government has set current lines. An indiscriminate cull of our wildlife in an attempt to mitigate shark attack is a shotgun approach to a problem that requires application of precise science to solve.
Culling our wildlife is jeopardizing taxpayer funded research.
And ironically the best chance we have of answering some of these questions is being jeopardized by this policy. Over the last decade the Western Australian public have invested millions of dollars in one of the worlds most sophisticated shark tagging and tracking programs [28]. Hundreds of sharks have been surgically implanted with acoustic tags that swim through an array of acoustic receivers, transmitting their location to the public through SMS and twitter. This ongoing program represents a massive investment by the WA public and a significant collaboration between state, interstate, federal and private entities. Drum-lining does not discriminate a tagged shark and these same tagged and tracked white, tiger and bull sharks, some which have been studied for close to a decade, could be caught, shot and dumped at sea. In the process we will be squandering our best chance at gaining the very knowledge we need to help predict when and where these animals are and accordingly mitigate and minimize human shark interaction. Why jeopardize such progressive research when we could do the opposite and ramp it up?
Bait attracts sharks.
But sharks are not indiscriminate feeding machines and don’t always eat the first thing they see [29]. Thousands of hours of footage of remote underwater stereo video shows although sharks (many completely harmless) are attracted to bait they often swim straight past. So permanently set baits, like drum-lines, attract sharks but don’t necessarily catch them. For this reason when fisheries undertake sampling surveys of sharks, reef fish and other fish stocks, it is operational policy not to set baited fishing gears such as traps or lines in close proximity to populated swimming beaches as this may attract sharks to the area and pose unacceptable risk to the public. Drum-lining goes against normal fisheries operational policy and does not make any rational sense from either a public safety policy or shark behavioural perspective. In addition there is no such thing as a selective hook; anything that can fit the bait in their mouth can be caught [30]. It is highly indiscriminate, attracting not just sharks but large fish, marine mammals and reptiles, rays, sea lions and more [31].
Drum-lining is indiscriminate and inhumane
Ironically drum-lining does not selectively target dangerous sharks. In fact drum-lining is an indiscriminate method of catching large marine fauna, non target species and undersized target species alike [32]. During 30 years of QLD and NSW shark control, 90% of the animals destroyed, represent no risk to humans [31]. Animals hooked overnight on drum-lines will likely die or be eaten. Sharks struggle against an anchor and, more so then humans, experience rapid lactic acid build up, quickly becoming exhausted and drowning [33]. Other animals including air-breathing marine mammals such as dugongs dolphins and turtles, many of which are protected, endangered or threatened, simply drown [34]. Commercially valuable species under intense fishing pressure elsewhere are wastefully killed and dumped [31]. Potentially dangerous sharks as defined by this policy are actually just a minor catch, hardly making this a targeted shark mitigation strategy. Rather this is an indiscriminate method of treating many species inhumanely, some of which are protected species.
Is this really the best we can come up with?
The drum-lining policy is costing potentially millions of dollars, whilst simultaneously jeopardizing a groundbreaking taxpayer funded research program on white sharks. In an attempt to catch and kill the tiny proportion of individuals greater then 3 m of a highly protected, threatened and poorly understood species the great white shark, it is attracting sharks to our most popular beaches and arguably placing swimmers at greater risk then if there were no baits in the first place. It is questionable if the other two target species, bull and tiger sharks could be considered a threat to humans when neither has been implicated in an attack in WA for decades. That aside, drum-lining indiscriminately and inhumanely catches many more non-target species and undersized target sharks then not and it runs the risk of impacting the very ecosystem that is the lifeblood of Western Australia’s fisheries, tourism and recreational industries.
There are countless better ways to address this issue.
We are sending boats out to catch animals and we have a choice. These animals can be shot in the head and dumped at sea or we deploy and monitor the same number of drum-lines and with minor additional effort tag them with acoustic pingers to become part of our tracking program. The same amount of effort is spent deploying drum lines. The same number of ‘dangerous’ sharks are being caught. The difference is we are not indiscriminately destroying our natural heritage and further endangering animals whose existence is just a push away from extinction. This effectively renders them harmless to the degree that our early warning system allows. If places like Brazil and Hawaii can do this then certainly, as one of the most prosperous progressive communities on earth we can too. There are also of course a whole kitbag of alternatives such as increased education, patrols and shark barriers as well as many exciting repellents that will develop given the impetus [35, 36]. We have the technology and expertise to increase public safety and knowledge of these animals and replace some of the fear we collectively feel (and I certainly feel) with hard fought rational knowledge. Silence means I would condone the Governments actions and I cannot. They are outdated and we know far more about the marine environment then when this kind of practice was common.
References:
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