Dublin Restaurant Stops Selling Foie Gras thanks to N.A.R.A.

From Laura Broxson, of the National Animal Rights Association in Ireland:

I am delighted to announce that La Mere Zou restaurant (22 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2), after only a small number of protests, has decided to stop serving foie gras!

Upon arriving there yesterday, a member of staff was outside changing the menus, and informed us that they have now stopped serving it, have even made new menus, and won't be getting foie gras in again.

He told me that they initially didn't want to admit defeat, but that we will have no need to protest their restaurant over foie gras anymore - and he even invited me to come back and confirm this with the manager during the week, if I wished.

So I would like to say a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who took part in this campaign, we did it!!!

Best wishes,
Laura Broxson
086 8729 444

National Animal Rights Association
http://www.naracampaigns.org

Congratulations on a job well done N.A.R.A.!

Mammals feel pain? What an amazing concept!

It still boggles my mind that people continue to think that if something living doesn't walk on two legs and style their own hair, it means they must not have the capability to feel pain.

Scientists have discovered (shock of shocks) that hermit crabs feel pain! And how did they discover this?

Well, they hurt them of course!


The only good thing (and 'good' is stretching it) about this article is that the research is being used to call for kinder treatment of crustaceans that are caught and used for food, as they are often treated badly based on the (horribly wrong) assumption that they cannot feel pain.

Professor Elwood said the research highlighted the need to investigate how crustaceans used in food industries are treated, saying that a "potentially very large problem" was being ignored.

However, I like to think that common sense could also have led to this conclusion, without the need to shock hermit crabs with electricity.

It's not like this issue has not been raised before: David Foster Wallace wrote an extremely disturbing but necessary article awhile back about the Maine Lobster Fest called Consider the Lobster that will leave you with a sinking feeling whenever you see those poor lobsters in glass aquariums, awaiting their doom.

And it begs the question how many other creatures have been captured and boiled alive after living on this planet longer than you, your parents, your grandparents and your great-grandparents ever inhabited it.

While we're on the subject of elephants...

As I mentioned in my last post, the elephants in the Okavango Delta of Botswana have a hope of protecting their new little pink addition because there is ample shade and plenty of mud. However, in the dry season between April and October, water becomes scarcer as the area dries up, and the elephants have to migrate to permenant water sources, such as the Moremi Games Reserve. This will be a trying time for the albino baby elephant, as for the rest of the herd. If you have seen the documentary Earth, I'm sure you can't forget the heart-wrenching story of the elephants that became separated from the rest of the migrating herd in the arid dustbowl of the Sub-Sahara, and ended up trekking back in the opposite direction, headed towards certain death. These were also elephants in Botswana's Okavango Delta.

I have just been informed by a reader who came across my last post that further to the northwest, in Mali, the elephants face an annual migration route that covers an area of 24,000 square kilometers called the Gourma region. The herds follow a route of approximately 450 to 600 staggering kilometers (280 - 375 miles) in their trek from one water source to the next- the longest of migration of any elephant herd on earth. You can see a fascinating map here of the migration trail of three separate herds, tracked by tagging a member of the herd and tracking the elephant via satellite by the Save the Elephants Foundation.

Compounding the already difficult migration is the fact that several formerly nomadic tribes of Mali have been encouraged by government subsidies to settle permenantly and begin raising crops. Obviously the best places for this would be around the available water sources in the area. Furthermore, to raise crops you need water, which also has to be sourced from these same lakes and marshes. So the demand of these precious resources is now much greater, leaving less to go around for the migrating elephant herds, as well as more obstacles (ie, human settlements) in their path to their dwindling water supply.

And that's not all: because of this great migration, tourism to view the elephants is on the rise, yet there is no eco-tourism policy as yet initiated.

It's a classic case of human versus wildlife conflict. This issue is broad and complex, and sounds like a dire situation, but luckily several organisations have copped on and have begun a massive effort to solve the problem before it gets any worse. The WILD Foundation has joined up with the Save the Elephants Foundation, the Environment and Development Group (UK), the Africa Parks Foundation (Netherlands) and Mali’s Direction Nationale de la Conservation de la Nature with funding from the US State Department and Agency for International Development to help protect and sustain this amazing herd.

Phase I (research, field data, tracking the elephants' routes as well as seeing how human settlements have affected the herds) was completed in 2006, and in 2007 they started Phase II: using the information of the herd composition and migration routes to avoid human/wildlife conflict and to form a strategy for herd conservation. Another important part of Phase II, which should be completed by the end of this year, is outreach to local communities- always a crucial factor if any animal rights campaign is to succeed.

Normally conservation campaigns are a matter of looking back at what has gone wrong in human/wildlife conflicts and then trying to make the best of a bad situation. The amazing thing about this project is that someone had the foresight to see a potential problem on the horizon, and began the steps necessary to solve the issue before the issue really became a problem. This project must be lauded as The Right Way to handle a situation with positive outcomes for both animals and people. If only more disasters were averted this way.

You can donate to the WILD Foundation's Mali Elephant Project here.

And read more (and see more photos) about the Mali Elephants here:
Africa Geographic article about the Mali elephants
Diary of Conservation Photographer Carlton Ward while on Mali elephant project in Phase I (2004)

Rare Animals in the Wild

An albino pink baby elephant has been caught on film in Botswana, an exciting event for those who witnessed it, as albino elephants are very rare. Questions arise now about the little elephant's survival rate under the intense African sun, but according to the article his chance is better there in the Okavango Delta than many other places due to the shade he can find, and the mud that he can use to coat his body for protection.

Good luck little elephant!

One of the larger concerns should also be poachers, as we know from experience that rare and magnificent animals in the wild (such as the poor white stag in the UK in 2007) are often prime targets for hunting trophies. In a positive turn of events, apparently that white stag sired a baby white stag and those who have seen it are more keen than ever to protect its location and therefore prevent a similar hunting tragedy that claimed its father.

Endangered and rare animals have a hard enough time surviving human encroachment without the more deliberate threat of hunting to worry about.

Good luck to all of the endangered animal species.

Delays & Guilt

I know many of you have experienced the same thing, but sometimes the whole plight of animals and the horrors that they go through becomes just too much. I want to post about the latest news article involving animals, but I can't bring myself to read it, or watch a video, or see the photos. What can I do to get past this? Now more than ever the word needs to be spread. If I feel bad just looking at a photo, I can't ignore how that animal in the photo must feel. The pain, the confusion, the outrage. So I delay, and work on other things, and ignore this blog, and the guilt consumes me. Any advice?