Horn may have been hacked out whilst the poor animal was still alive.
Photo is not good but sometimes we need to show these images just to get the reality home to people a bit more. It is the same with Elephants – taking tusk is not a clean procedure.
Regards Mark.
Leading naturalist and animal advocate Sir David Attenborough warns of the collapse of civilization due to global warming:
Read the full story via this link:
Posted by Carly Day | November 29, 2018
Vegetarian “meat” manufacturer Quorn opened its new mega factory in Billingham, Teesside in the UK this month, with the aim of doubling production of their core products to accommodate increasing customer demand for vegetarian and vegan meat alternatives.
The new site lays claim to being the largest meat-alternative production facility in the world and expects to deliver 1.33 million packages of Quorn every week — the equivalent of meat from 1600 cows.
The meat alternative industry is experiencing rapid growth, as consumers respond to both ethical and environmental concerns around its consumption. Quorn reports an impressive 15% in growth annually over the last few years and cite research that says the UK is the “most advanced meat-free market in the world.”
A report released earlier this year projected that market for meat substitutes will increase at the rate of 6.8% every year, and will be work 6.3 billion USD by 2023.
“Around the world we are seeing a significant increase in meat-reduction diets, including both flexitarianism and veganism,” says Quorn Foods CEO Kevin Brennan.
The company said that the new facility will enable them to further reduce carbon emissions — part of their core environmental sustainability commitment. They have already removed 297 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic from the supply chain and have pledged to use only 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025.
Although the UK is an important market for Quorn products, the US is also a key target market for the company.
Quorn products are produced from a mycoprotein derived from a kind of fungus grown by the process of fermentation. In many Quorn products, egg is a key ingredient; however, the company have introduced a vegan version and say they are committed to producing a wider range of vegan products in the future.
Full article:
President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and others who oppose action to address human-induced climate change should be held accountable for climate crimes against humanity. They are the authors and agents of systematic policies that deny basic human rights to their own citizens and people around the world, including the rights to life, health, and property. These politicians have blood on their hands, and the death toll continues to rise.
As the Earth warms due to the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, climate-related disasters that include high-intensity hurricanes, floods, droughts, extreme precipitation, forest fires, and heat waves, pose rising dangers to life and property. Hurricanes become more destructive as warmer ocean waters feed more energy to the storms. Warmer air also carries more moisture for devastating rainfalls, while rising sea levels lead to more flooding.
Yet Trump and his minions are the loyal servants of the fossil-fuel industry, which fill Republican party campaign coffers. Trump has also stalled the fight against climate change by pulling out of the Paris Agreement. The politicians thereby deprive the people of their lives and property out of profound cynicism, greed, and willful scientific ignorance.
A group of world-leading ecologists recently highlighted that critical Earth systems could spiral out of control. The Nobel-prize winning Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has also just released a harrowing report showing that the world has just a few years left to move decisively towards renewable energy if it hopes to achieve the globally agreed target to limit warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average temperature of the planet.
Caging animals is cruel: animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain and joy. Caged animals endure immense suffering because they have no control over their lives, experience extreme frustration, are severely restricted in their movement, and are prevented from performing almost all natural behaviours.
Hundreds of millions of farm animals across the EU are forced to live their entire lives imprisoned in tiny, barren cages. This extreme confinement is routinely inflicted on many different species. Sows are forced to nurse their piglets in crates, rabbits and quail endure their whole lives in barren cages, and ducks and geese are caged for force feeding to produce foie gras.
Click on the following link to see the state of caged animal cruelty across all EU member states – https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/11/22/eu-member-state-percentages-of-farm-animals-caged-in-europe-the-shame-of-the-eu/
y to finally End the Cage Age.
Together, united, we have the opportunity to rid Europe of these cages. Start today – join up and sign our ECI (European Citizens’ Initiative) demanding that the European Commission bans the use of cages in animal farming. If one million of us raise our voices together, we have the opportunity to finally End the Cage Age.
Here is more information about caged farm animals that relate to the EU caged animal link provided above::
Cows – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/cows/
Sheep – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/sheep/
Turkeys – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/turkeys/
Fish – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/fish/
Quail – https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/quail/
Above 2 pictures – Val Cameron.
From the ‘Environmental Investigation Agency’ (EIA) – London UK
Palm oil is a vegetable oil found in literally thousands of products ranging from soaps and cosmetics to countless foodstuffs including chocolates, cereals, dairy products and crisps. Its popularity is due to its comparatively low cost to produce and ready availability – but this comes at a terrible cost and palm oil production is widely linked to deforestation, illegal logging, human rights abuses and biodiversity loss.
The problem
Illegal, environmentally destructive and socially exploitative palm oil production is driving deforestation and biodiversity loss, violating human rights and undermining the rule of law in producer countries.
National laws are often inadequate to protect forests, people and biodiversity, while the private and public sectors often ignore existing legal protections. Industry ‘sustainability’ certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) also offer weak protections, are variably implemented and enforced, and often result in proclaimed standards not being met. Booming global trade in palm oil – used in everything from biscuits and biofuels to cosmetics and cleaning products – incentivises increased production.
The most progressive ‘No deforestation, no peatland, and no exploitation’ (NDPE) policies from major palm oil companies are beginning to emerge, but their policies are voluntary and their reliability is still largely untested.
Marine plastic pollution is one of the most serious emerging threats to the health of oceans and a major hazard to marine biodiversity. We have worked on the issue at the UK level and internationally, campaigning both alone and in partnerships against single-use plastics such as supermarket carrier bags, microbeads in rinse-off products and other forms of damaging plastic packaging.
Unprecedented growth in the production and use of plastics is triggering a global environmental crisis. Each year, at least eight million tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean, an amount set to quadruple by 2050 unless major reform is put in place.
Over 800 species are known to have ingested or been entangled in marine plastic pollution, killing hundreds of thousands of animals every year. Urgent action is needed to significantly reduce plastic consumption and waste to end the devastating pollution of our oceans. We are campaigning to phase out all unnecessary plastic use and significantly improve reuse and recycling
Posted by Katie Valentine | November 16, 2018
Ogooué-Leketi National Park provides these animals with 1,530 square miles of government-protected land. The park borders Batéké Plateau National Park in nearby Gabon; combined, the two parks cover over 2,120 square miles.
Within the park, there are fertile forests, sprawling plains, and river valleys — all habitats for wildlife that doesn’t exist anywhere else on Earth, according to preservationists.
Included on that list are side-striped jackals, six extremely rare savannah plant species, and a new species of the warbler-like cisticola bird. There’s also a presence of somewhat more common but still endangered species, such as lowland gorillas, forest buffalo, red river hogs, and mandrills.
Since 2004, this part of the country has been under speculation by the government’s Ministry of Forestry Economy, along with authorities from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program. Originally, three logging areas overlapped with potential parkland, but with a great deal of effort, the designation was finally pushed through.
The last of the logging ventures left the area by 2016. For conservationists, this happened not a moment too soon – in 2010, it had become apparent that great ape populations in the area were declining. Due to a fear of the logging activities, elephants had begun gathering in forest clearances during the evening instead of the daytime.
While the establishment of Ogooué-Leketi National Park is a tremendous step forward for the protection of some of Africa’s most endangered species, the threat of commercial hunting remains ever-present. Roads built for loggers make the park easy to access. The Congolese government is currently working with nearby communities to mitigate this threat.
Fury over rare white lion being auctioned off ‘to be shot by trophy hunters’
The majestic animal, named Mufasa, is at the heart of a legal battle in South Africa as campaigners desperately bid to save his life
rare white lion is set to be auctioned off to be shot by trophy hunters – in spite of a huge worldwide campaign to save him.
The majestic animal, named Mufasa, was confiscated three years ago when he was a cub, along with another baby lion called Soraya.
Animal lovers want to move him to a sanctuary, but authorities in South Africa have instead announced he will be sold at auction.
Because Mufasa is infertile, the only value he would have is to be bought by a hunting company and then shot.
There are said to be less than 300 white lions like Mufasa in the world, with just 13 still living in the wild.
More than 200,000 people have signed a petition calling for the decision to be reversed.
The petition, to South Africa’s Minister of Environmental Affairs, says: “Mufasa and Suraya are now three years old and are inseparable.
“Nature conservation officials refused permission for Mufasa to be relocated to a sanctuary, who offered to care for both Mufasa and Suraya for their natural lives, free of charge.
“Instead, the rehab centre was told telephonically that Mufasa will be auctioned to raise funds for the department.”
Wildlife sanctuary Wild for Life – where Mufasa has been cared for over the past three years – is raising cash to battle against the auction in court.
It wrote: “In the last few weeks we have seen and read extensively about what happens to lions in the industry.
“Mufasa has had a vasectomy and cannot be bred with. This means there is only one of two options left.
“The number of lion hunters are down and lions have been killed in high numbers for their bones to be exported to the East.”
And it continued: “Soraya and Mufasa are inseparable and it would be extremely traumatic for Soraya to lose her companion.
“She was in a terrible emotional state before they were united as cubs and even when moved to a bigger enclosure she was highly anxious when she woke up and couldn’t find Mufasa.”
Comedian and animal rights campaigner Ricky Gervais alerted his followers to Mufasa’s plight, tweeting: “Shame on the pathetic sadist who pays the money to shoot this animal, and shame on the snivelling coward who accepts the money too. Both worthless.”
Elephants Are Evolving Without Tusks to Survive Poachers
Posted by Katie Valentine | November 15, 2018
Source:
https://ladyfreethinker.org/elephants-evolving-without-tusks-survive-poachers/
Many of the elephants wandering Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park these days are tuskless.
From 1977 until 1992, the country underwent a brutal civil war. Due to the conflict, about ninety percent of the elephants that once existed there were poached for their ivory, which helped fund weapons and feed soldiers.
Gorongosa’s tuskless elephants developed a biological advantage as a result of the poaching. According to recent figures, one-third of the generation of females born after the war ended never grew tusks – something that would normally only occur in 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants.
Elephant behavior expert Joyce Poole, who studies the park’s pachyderms, says that decades ago, some 4,000 elephants lived in Gorongosa. Following the civil war, those numbers tragically dwindled into the triple digits. Yet-unpublished research compiled by Poole shows that 51 percent of the 200 known adult females (aged 25 or older) that survived the war are tuskless. Of the female elephants born since the war, 32 percent have no tusks.
Poole, who serves as scientific director of a nonprofit called Elephant Voices, explains that male elephants have bigger and heavier tusks than females of the same age. She continues: “But once there’s been heavy poaching pressure on a population, then the poachers start to focus on the older females as well.” The resulting older age population of elephants will, therefore, consist of a high proportion of tuskless females.
Elephant poaching remains a huge problem throughout parts of Africa – it’s estimated that on average, an African elephant is killed every 15 minutes. It’s no surprise, then, that similar shifts among female survivors and their daughters have occurred in countries other than Mozambique that also have a history of substantial ivory poaching. The effect has been particularly extreme in South Africa – in the early 2000’s, 98 percent of the 174 females in Addo Elephant National Park were reported to be tuskless.
In some heavily-hunted areas, such as southern Kenya, poaching has led to reduced tusk sizes. According to a 2015 study by Duke University and the Kenya Wildlife Service, male survivors of a period of intense poaching had tusks about a fifth smaller than average, while females had tusks about one-third the normal size. This pattern continued – offspring born after 1995 had tusks between 21 and 27 percent smaller than elephants in the 1960’s.
Elephants without tusks are surviving and appear to be healthy, according to Poole, but the work they do with their tusks is part-and-parcel to their everyday lives and vital to the well-being of many smaller species, who rely on elephants to dig holes for water and topple trees over for shelter.
While measures are being taken to reduce the global demand for ivory, such as ivory bans in the U.S. and China, it’s unclear how long it will take for elephants with high levels of tusklessness to recover. One thing remains clear: when it comes to saving these beautiful, gentle giants from extinction, time is of the essence.
World Animals Voice 