Help end the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments and ensure their retirement to Chimpanzee Sanctuaries around the country. There are currently 1,200 chimpanzees locked up in nine laboratories across the US. Please make a brief, polite phone call to your US Representative to co-sponsor the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 5852). Chimps Deserve Better!
There is a parasite, known as toxoplasma gondii, that reports say are responsible for killing many sea otters. The parasite is found in, of all things, domestic cat feces. How, you may wonder, are cat feces getting into the ocean and into the shell fish that sea otters eat? Every time someone cleans their cat’s litter box by dumping the feces into the toilet, the feces end up where most of our waste water ends up, in the ocean. This exemplifies the interconnectedness of all things. Sea Otters eat shellfish and sea urchins, in particular. If sea otters are not around to eat sea urchins, which live on kelp, scientists fear the sea urchins will wipe out the sea forests. Sea otters are being looked at as indicator species providing information on our ecosystem as a whole. If indicators are healthy, the rest of the ecosystem is healthy.
Nearly every day Jim and I take our three dogs for a walk around the block, which equals about 2 miles. About ½ mile of the walk is along a “busy” road (busy in a rural location means about 1 car every couple minutes although we usually get 3 or 4 cars together and then none for about 3 to 5 minutes). Now I am a person who decided a long time ago that I could never be a waitress because the first time someone gave me a hard time and complained I would dump their food in their lap. But besides that, you have to clean up after people, and since I don’t even like to clean up after myself much less a stranger (no, I do not clean up after Jim, that is his job) I could never imagine being a waitress.
What, you may be asking, does this have to do with my daily walk? Well, it has everything to do with it. I enjoy the rural area we live in but I abhor the trash I find along the road, so much so that a couple of years ago,I decided that Jim and I needed to pick it up. I was sick of looking at it. And since we are the only ones who walk in our neighborhood, we are the only ones who see it. And I prefer to look at the trees, the rock walls, the streams along our walk and not the beer cans, bottles, and MacDonald’s bags that float in the streams or litter the roadway.
But it got me to wondering, what is it that possesses a person to, when finished with their MacDonald’s meal, open the window, take their empty Giant Gulp cup complete with lid and straw, Big Mac box, apple pie container, and bag that they all came in and drop them out the window to land along our road? I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure, they aren’t doing it in their neighborhood. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to look at it. I’ll bet you they would even find it disgusting if someone else’s trash landed in their driveway. But how is it that these people (or disgusting humans as I call them since saying they are pigs or animals I find offensive to animals) do not see the harm they are doing to our planet. Do they feel, since it is “our” planet that they have the right to do with it as they wish? Do they not understand that it is one planet, one earth, one world and we all suffer the consequences of their selfish gesture?
I’m also pretty certain that back seats come standard in most vehicles. So, why not just throw the trash into the back seat and remove it when they get home? I’ve known people who have a back seat full of trash and when you first see this you think, oh my, how can they have this much trash in their car, and you notice a slight rancid odor and decide you’ll take your car instead of riding with them. But at least they are respecting the earth, if not their own space. Then once a year or so, they clean out their car. Disgusting, you say? I consider them considerate and conscientious.
I guess I can understand people throwing out beer bottles. Who wants to get stopped with empty beer bottles in the car? But isn’t that a comforting thought, people driving along the same road you are driving on, drinking beer and other alcoholic beverages. It’s bad enough that people get behind the wheel when they have left a bar filled to the gills. But to also know that they are driving and drinking is an even scarier thought. Yes, they should be arrested and/or have their license revoked for drinking and driving, first offense, no second chances (especially if they have failed the sobriety test). Every drunk off the road could save your life.
Now when I was a kid, we returned bottles and we got money. That was great! This was often how I got my spending money – go collect soda bottles if you want some money. A working class family, cash wasn’t just lying around for our spending pleasure. We had to earn it and for a kid under 16 that often meant spending hours looking for empty bottles that people threw out. But I’ll tell you, the roads were much cleaner than they are now. And I can’t tell you how many broken bottles I’ve found with pieces of glass that could cut not only my small dogs’ feet but any other wild animal that lives in my neighborhood and walks the same roads we walk. I say, bring back the bottle bill (and yes, it does exist in a few forward thinking states.) There will still be people who litter, but at least those people who pick up the trash will make a little money doing it!
I recently read a terrific O Henry cartoon that demonstrated perfectly what I’m talking about: O Henry goes to a beautiful spot to paint. While he is painting, a family comes along and sits down to picnic. They proceed to litter the scenic area and then leave. O Henry finishes his painting and brings it to the home of the people who littered the scenic spot. The painting is just how they left it with all the trash. They look at it and say, “Who would want to buy such an ugly scene?” Exactly! Not in their backyard.
The co-founders of Eye Help Animals want to hear from you! Please let us know what you are thinking and what you are doing to help promote biodiversity in our world.
Florida: Everglades Restoration Project – The purchase of 187,000 acres of land owned by US Sugar will go far to restore the “River of Grass” to its natural flow. The anticipated sales price of the project, $1.75 billion, is being partially funded by the South Florida Water Management District using $50-million from cash reserves and taking the rest from long-term notes called “certificates of participation”. But Congress needs to step up and move forward on a bill they passed authorizing further spending – so far no money has been approved.
U.S. Sugar will continue farming its land over the next six years when it will then hand over control to the state. It would constitute the largest conservation purchase in the state history.
This purchase of land will resolve two major concerns: it will permit Lake Okeechobee to serve as a dry season water supply and reduce pollution to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries. With the dike that was there the lake began to be managed as an irrigation water reservoir, which caused great harm to the lake, its estuaries, and the Everglades.
For a complete report on the project, go to http://www.fwfonline.org/news/EvergladesLandPurchase.htm .
Despite the 1971 passing of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to stop mass slaughter of these animals, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has changed leadership and direction and began rounding up wild horses for slaughter. And because of the costs of caring and feeding the wild horses in holding pens, with not enough horses being adopted, they want to slaughter thousands of healthy horses. Take Action and write to your congress representatives and senators.
Take Action to protect all wildlife by signing the Endangered Species Act Legacy Pledge. Despite the many species that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has saved from extinction, including bald eagles, Yellowstone grizzly bears, gray wolves, and whooping cranes, the ESA is under constant attack from Congress and the White House over the past few years.
National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and other conservation groups are working to change this by collecting signatures for the “Endangered Species Act Legacy Pledge”.
Take Action to protect the Polar Bears of the Chukchi Sea. Despite the fact that polar bears have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given oil companies the ok on moving forward with oil and gas exploration and development in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. You can Take Action on this issue now!
When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.
-Ingrid Newkirk
To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.
-Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize 1915